The grey streak had grown to a wide rent of pale green, now broadening and brightening into day. Ere the sky flecked with crimson, or the distant tree-tops tinged with golden fire, the life of the whole jungle was astir, waking the discords of innumerable menageries. Cockatoos whistled, monkeys chattered, parrots screamed, mockingbirds reproduced these and a thousand other sounds a thousandfold. All nature seemed renewed, exulting in the freshened energies of another day, but still the Marquise sat by the lagoon, pale, exhausted, worn out, motionless, with the dead seaman’s head in her lap. CHAPTER XL HOMEWARD BOUND “But, madame, I am as anxious as you can be! Independent of my own feelings—and judge if they be not strong—the brigantine should not lie here another hour. After last night’s work, it will not be long before a Spanish man-of-war shows herself in the offing, and I have no desire that our papers should be overhauled, now when my cruise is so nearly finished. I tell you, my dearest wish is to have it settled, and weigh with the next tide.” Captain George spoke from his heart, yet the Marquise seemed scarcely satisfied. Her movements were abrupt and restless, her eyes glittered, and a fire as of fever burned in her cheeks, somewhat wasted with all her late excitement and suspense. For the first time, too, he detected silver lines about the temples, under those heavy black locks that had always seemed to him only less beautiful than her child’s. “Not a moment must be lost,” said she, “not a moment—not a moment,” and repeating her words, walked across the deck to gaze wistfully over the side on Port Welcome, with its white houses glistening in the morning sun. They were safe on board ‘The Bashful Maid,’ glad to escape with life from the successful revolt that had burned Montmirail West to the ground, and destroyed most of the white people’s property on the island. Partly owing to its distance from the original scene of outbreak, partly from its lying under the very guns of the brigantine, of which the tonnage and weight of metal had been greatly exaggerated by the negroes, Port Welcome was yet standing, but its black population were keeping high holiday, apparently masters of the situation, and its white residents crept about in fear and trembling, not knowing how much longer they might be allowed to call their very lives their own. It had been a memorable night, a night of murder and rapine, and horror and dismay. Few escaped so well as Madame de Montmirail and her daughter. None indeed had the advantage of such a rescue. The negroes who tracked them into the bush, and who had delayed their departure to appropriate such plunder as they could snatch from the burning house, or to drink from its cellars success to the revolt, only reached that defile through which the fugitives were guided by Fleurette after these had passed by. The disappointed pursuers were there received by a couple of shots from Slap-Jack and his shipmates,