While he made his further dispositions, she found herself left for a few seconds comparatively unwatched, and at once stole into the open moonlight, where her white dress could be discerned plainly from the house. She knew her husband would be smoking his evening tobacco, according to custom, in the verandah. At little more than a hundred paces he could hardly fail to see her; and in an instant she had unbound the red turban and waved it round her head, in the desperate hope that he might accept that warning for a danger signal. The quick-witted Italian seemed to comprehend at once that something was wrong. He imitated her gesture, retired into the house, and the next minute his figure was seen in the sitting-room with the Marquise and her daughter. By this time Hippolyte had returned to her side, and she could only watch in agony for the result. Completely surrounded by the intoxicated and infuriated negroes, there seemed to be no escape for the besieged, while the looks and gestures of their leader, closely copied by his chosen band, denoted how little of courtesy or common humanity was to be expected from the Coromantee, excited to madness by all the worst passions of his savage nature bursting from the enforced restraints that had so long kept them down. A bolder spirit than the Signor’s might have been excused for betraying considerable apprehension in such a crisis, and in good truth Bartoletti was fairly frightened out of his wits. In common with the rest of the whites on the island, he had long suspected a conspiracy amongst the negroes, and feared that such an insurrection would take place; but no great social misfortune is ever really believed in till it comes, and he had neither taken measures for its prevention, nor thoroughly realised the magnitude of the evil. Now that he felt it was upon him he knew not where to turn for aid. There was no time to make phrases or to stand on ceremony. He rushed into the sitting-room with a blanched cheek and a wild eye, that caused each of the ladies to drop her work on her lap, and gaze at him in consternation. “Madame!” he exclaimed, and his jaw shook so that he could hardly form the syllables, “we must leave the house at once—we must save ourselves. There is an _émeute_, a revolt, a rebellion among the slaves. I know them—the monsters! They will not be appeased till they have drunk our blood. Oh! why did I ever come to this accursed country?” Cerise turned as white as a sheet—her blue eyes were fixed, her lips apart. Even the Marquise grew pale, though her colour came back, and she held her head the more erect a moment afterwards. “Sit down,” she said, imperiously, yet kindly enough. “Take breath, my good man, and take courage also. Tell me exactly what you have seen;” and added, turning to Cerise, “don’t be frightened, child—these overseers are sad alarmists. I daresay it is only what the negroes call a ‘bobbery,’ after all!”