d, and in his voice there was a faint note at
least of the defiance aroused in him by a blow which he dared not, for
his life's sake, return. His body had remained unyielding under it, but
the spirit within writhed now in torment.

"You don't know? Well, here's to quicken your wits." Again the cane
descended. "Have you thought of his name yet?"

"I have not."

"Stubborn, eh?" For a moment the Colonel leered. Then his passion
mastered him. "'Swounds! You impudent dog! D'you trifle with me? D'you
think I'm to be mocked?"

Pitt shrugged, shifted sideways on his feet again, and settled into
dogged silence. Few things are more provocative; and Colonel Bishop's
temper was never one that required much provocation. Brute fury now
awoke in him. Fiercely now he lashed those defenceless shoulders,
accompanying each blow by blasphemy and foul abuse, until, stung beyond
endurance, the lingering embers of his manhood fanned into momentary
flame, Pitt sprang upon his tormentor.

But as he sprang, so also sprang the watchful blacks. Muscular bronze
arms coiled crushingly about the frail white body, and in a moment the
unfortunate slave stood powerless, his wrists pinioned behind him in a
leathern thong.

Breathing hard, his face mottled, Bishop pondered him a moment. Then:
"Fetch him along," he said.

Down the long avenue between those golden walls of cane standing some
eight feet high, the wretched Pitt was thrust by his black captors in
the Colonel's wake, stared at with fearful eyes by his fellow-slaves at
work there. Despair went with him. What torments might immediately await
him he cared little, horrible though he knew they would be. The real
source of his mental anguish lay in the conviction that the elaborately
planned escape from this unutterable hell was frustrated now in the very
moment of execution.

They came out upon the green plateau and headed for the stockade and
the overseer's white house. Pitt's eyes looked out over Carlisle Bay, of
which this plateau commanded a clear view from the fort on one side to
the long sheds of the wharf on the other. Along this wharf a few shallow
boats were moored, and Pitt caught himself wondering which of these was
the wherry in which with a little luck they might have been now at sea.
Out over that sea his glance ranged miserably.

In the roads, standing in for the shore before a gentle breeze that
scarcely ruffled the sapphire surface of the Caribbean, came a stately
red-hu