How should I set about carrying him off to the coast, though? That was the prime matter. Seeing that even if the schooner--which was no doubt hovering out of sight--were to make a bold dash for the land with the trade-wind, in a night eleven hours long--there were sentries close round Longwood from sunset, the starlight shining mostly always in the want of a moon; and at any rate there was rock and gully enough, betwixt here and the coast, to try the surest foot aboard the Hebe, let alone an emperor. With plenty of woods for a cover, one might steal up close to Longwood, but the bare rocks showed you off to be made a mark of. Whew! but why were those same Blacks on the island, I thought: just strip them stark-naked, and let them lie in the Devil's Punch-bowl, or somewhere, beyond military hours, when I warrant me they might slip up, gully by gully, to the very sentries' backs! Their colour wouldn't show them, and savages as they seemed, couldn't they settle as many sentries as they needed, creep into the very bedchamber where Buonaparte slept, and manhandle him bodily away down through some of the nearest hollows, before any one was the wiser? The point that still bothered me was, why the fourth of the Blacks was wanting at present, unless he had his part to play elsewhere. If it was chance, then the _whole_ might be a notion of mine, which I knew I was apt to have sometimes. If I could only make out the fourth Black, so as to tally with the scheme, on the other hand, then I thought it was all sure: but of course this quite pauled me, and I gave it up, to work out my fancy case by providing signals betwixt us plotters inside, and the schooner out of sight from the telegraphs. There was no use for her to run in and take the risk, without good luck having turned up on the island; yet any sign she could profit by must be both sufficient to reach sixty miles or so, and hidden enough not to alarm the telegraphs or the cruisers. Here was a worse puzzle than all, and I only guessed at it for my own satisfaction--as a fellow can't help doing when he hears a question he can't answer--till my eye lighted on Diana's Peak, near three thousand feet above the sea. There it was, by Jove! 'Twas quite clear at the time; but by nightfall there was always more or less cloud near the top; and if you set a fire on the very peak, 'twould only be seen leagues off: a notion that brought to mind a similar thing which I told you saved the Indiaman from a lee-shore one night on the African coast,--and again, by George! I saw _that_ must have been meant at first by the Negroes as a smoke to help the French brig easier in! Putting that and that together, why it struck me at once what the fourth Black's errand might be--namely, to watch for the schooner, and kindle his signal as soon as he couldn't see the island for mist. I was sure of it; and as for a dark night coming on at sea, the freshening of the breeze there promised nothing more likely; a