She listened to him delighted. His queer phrases were sweet in her ears; to her they were no vulgar sea-slang, but the echo of a love-music that had charmed her heart, and drowned her senses half a lifetime ago; that rang with something of the old thrilling vibration still; but the wild look of terror that had scared him more than once gleamed again in her eyes, and she laid her hand on his shoulder as if to keep him down by force, while she whispered—“My child, not so! How rash, how reckless! Just like your father; but he, at least, had not your fate to fear. Do you not see your danger? Can you not guess why I concealed your birth, hid you up in your babyhood, and smuggled you out of the island as soon as you could run? Born of a slave, on a slave estate, do you not know, my boy, that you, too, are a slave?” “Gammon! mother,” exclaimed Slap-Jack, nothing daunted. “What _me_?—captain of the foretop on board ‘The Bashful Maid,’—six guns on the main-deck, besides carronades—master and owner, Captain George! and talk to me as if I was one of them darkies what does mule’s work with monkey’s allowance! Who’s to come and take me, I should like to know? Let ’em heave ahead an’ do it, that’s all—a score at a spell if they can muster ’em. I’ll show ’em pretty quick what sort of a slave they can make out of an able seaman!” “Hush, hush!” she exclaimed, listening earnestly, and with an expression of intense fear contracting her worn features; “I can hear them coming—negroes by the footfall, and a dozen at least. They will be at the door in five minutes. They have turned by the old hog-plum now. As you love your life, my boy; nay, as you love your mother, who has pined and longed for you all these years, let me hide you away in there. You will be safe. Trust me, you will be safe enough; they will never think of looking for you there!” So speaking, and notwithstanding much good-humoured expostulation and resistance from Slap-Jack, who, treating the whole affair as a jest, was yet inclined to fight it out all the same, Célandine succeeded in pushing her son into an inner division of the hut, containing only a bed-place, shut off by a strong wooden door. This she closed hurriedly, at the very moment a dozen pattering footsteps halted outside, and a rough negro voice, in accents more imperative than respectful, demanded instant admission. CHAPTER XXXIII JACK AGROUND