The overseer took his cigar from his lips and laughed; but to the intense relief of the young men, perhaps to the saving of his own life, he shook his head. "No, Dinny," he said, "it would alarm the station. They'd think someone was escaping. Let it be." Dinny sighed, the overseer smoked on, and the hot silence of the tropic clearing was only broken by the screaming and chattering of the excited bird, the hum of insects, and the clink-clink, thud-thud, of fetters and hoe as the convicts toiled on in the glowing sun. They kept as near as they dared to their task-master, and he smiled superciliously as he put his own interpretation upon their acts. "The artful scoundrels!" he said to himself; "they want me to believe that they always work like this. Well, it helps the plantation;" and he smoked placidly on, little dreaming that every time Abel reversed his hoe, so as to break a clod with the back, the young man glanced at him and measured the distance between them, while he calculated how long to hold the handle of the tool, and where would be the best place to strike the enemy so as to disable him at once. "You take the soldier, Bart," said Abel, softly. "I'll manage the overseer." "Right, lad! but not without we're obliged." "No. Then, as soon as they're down, into the wood, find Mary, and make for her boat." The heat was intense, the shade beneath the great cotton-tree grateful, and the aroma of the cigar so delicious that the overseer sank into a drowsy reverie; while the soldier gave the two convicts a half-laughing look and then turned to face the jungle, whose depths he pierced with his eyes. Bart drew a long breath and gazed toward the dark part of the jungle, and there was an intense look of love and satisfaction in his eyes as he tried to make out the place where Mary lay, as he believed, hidden. The sight of the sentry on the watch with his gun ready had ceased to trouble him, for he had told himself that the clumsy fellow could not hit a barn-door, let alone a smaller mark; while Abel seemed to be less agitated, and to be resuming his normal state. They were not twenty yards from the edge of the forest now, the sentry's back was toward them, and the overseer was getting to the end of his cigar, and watching the watcher with half-closed eyes, and an amused smile upon his yellow countenance. "Every bullet finds its billet," he muttered to himself; and, stretching himself, he was in the act of rising, when the bird, which had been silent, uttered a shrill, chattering cry, as if freshly disturbed, and the soldier shouted excitedly-- "Theer, sor, I can see it. A big one staling away among the threes. For the sake of all the saints give the wurrud!" "Fire, then!" cried the overseer; and the sentry raised his piece to the "present."