ws of the change of plans.
Two days later Jacob rode up to the plantation. He had upon the first
occasion told Stebbings that the sum he asked for the estate seemed to
him too high, but that he would return to talk it over with him, after
he had seen other properties. Immediately upon his arrival, which
happened just as the slaves returned from work, Mike sent off one of the
negro boys, who had already collected a pile of brushwood on the beacon
hill. Half an hour later a bright flame shone out on its summit.

"I wonder what that means?" the planter, who was sitting at dinner in
his veranda with Jacob, said angrily.

"It looks like a signal fire," Jacob remarked calmly. "I have heard that
they are sometimes lit on the seacoast of England as a signal to
smugglers."

"There are no smugglers here," the planter said, "nor any cause for such
a signal."

He clapped his hands, and ordered the black slave who answered to tell
the overseer to take two of the guards, and at once proceed to the fire,
and examine its cause. After dinner was over the planter went out to the
slave huts. All the white men were sitting or lying in the open air,
enjoying the rest after their labor. The negroes were singing or working
in their garden plots, The list was called over, and all found to be
present.

"I expect," the planter said, "that it is only a silly freak of some of
these black fellows to cause uneasiness. It can mean nothing, for the
garrison and militia could put down any rising without difficulty and
there is no hope of escape. In a week we could search every possible
hiding-place in the island."

"Yes, that is an advantage which you have over the planters in Virginia,
to which place I hear our Scottish brethren have sent large numbers of
the malignants. There are great woods stretching no man knoweth how far
inland, and inhabited by fierce tribes of Indians, among whom those who
escape find refuge."

That night when all was still Harry Furness and his seven comrades crept
through the opening in the hut. In the grove they were joined by Jacob.
They then made their way to the seashore, where they saw lying a large
shallop, drawn partly up on the beach. A man was sitting in her, while
many other dark figures lay stretched on the sand near. Harry and his
party moved in that direction, and found that the men from two of the
other plantations had already arrived. A few minutes later the other two
parties arrived. The whole body ad