And then, as I ran, I looked more closely at the man whom fate had made my comrade in this desperate adventure.  He was an older man than I had expected; very powerfully made, as his cast of the buccaneer had proved; but his hair was white, and, short as was the distance we had run, I could see that he would soon be laboring for breath.  But it was two miles to the big house, as he had called Mistress Lucy’s abode, and I did not despair of reaching the edge of forest land before Vetch could make up on us, even if he started the very moment he heard the alarm.  If once we gained the forest, we might perhaps blind our trail in a stream, and so gain time enough for our further flight to the swamp.

We were running on a broad track that divided the sugar plantation, and here and there negro laborers who had been roused from their noontide sleep by the horn blast and the shot rose up to see what was afoot.  None of them offered to interfere.  They stared at us for the most part in silence, one or two of the older people crying out that it was Uncle Moses on the run, and wondering at his companion being a white man.

I took little note of them, for I was already anxious on behalf of the old negro.  We had six miles to go; could he hold out?  ’Twas two miles from the big house to the house we had left; a horseman could cover the distance in little longer than it would take us to reach the forest; and then we should have but one mile start in a race of six.  The odds were heavily against even me, in strong and lusty youth; how much more heavily against Uncle Moses, who was perhaps three times my age!

Already I was slackening my pace to keep with him.  And we were cumbered with the muskets we had seized—­heavy weapons, and, when I came to think of it, likely to prove of little use to us, for we could not pause in the race to light matches, nor, once they were discharged, should we have time to recharge them.  Yet I dared not suggest we should fling them down; they were our only weapons save for a knife that Uncle Moses carried at his belt, and perchance if it came to a fight at close quarters we could wield them with some effect as clubs.  So we pounded on, saying never a word, I husbanding my breath, the negro panting hard.

We came to the edge of the forest land bordering the estate, and when we had plunged into it for some little distance Moses was fain to stop to recover his wind.

“Dey hab not started yet, massa,” he gasped.

“How do you know?” I asked.

“’Cos dere is no sound of de dogs,” he replied.

“Should we hear them three miles away?”

“Oh, yes, massa; de wind carry de sound miles and miles.”

“We have luck on our side, then.  Can you run again?”

“Yes, massa.  Po’ Uncle Moses hain’t no chicken now, but he hain’t done yet.”