The words were scarcely uttered before a white man, only half-dressed, and bearing a female in his arms, sprang from the burning ruins, followed closely by a tall powerful negro, with a bundle grasped by his left arm, and a cutlas flaming in his right hand. The leader dashed past the trees where the murderers had taken their stand, at headlong speed, apparently as little embarrassed with the female form he carried, as if his burden were an infant. The negro kept directly in his master’s rear. A yell arose: half a dozen shots were discharged--but not a bullet found its mark. “By Heaven! the villain will escape us!” roared the pirate-captain, rushing from his concealment in pursuit. Another of the gang had already crossed his path, but the fugitive discharged a pistol, and shot the assailant dead. The occurrence caused a moment’s delay. It was a fatal one: for Gaspard overtook his intended victim, and struck fiercely at him with a dagger. It missed the heart it aimed at, but found a sheath in the bosom of her whom the fugitive supported; and before a surer blow could be delivered, with one trenchant sweep the negro’s cutlass cleft the villain to the chin. The wood was gained--the fugitive believing that he held a living body in his arms! Alas! that precious burden was only a breathless corpse! That was the last effort of the murderers. A gang of wood-cutters, alarmed by the blaze and firing, had hurried to their master’s domicile, while the murderous crew, eight in number, retreated to the woods; and for that time, darkness and a tangled copse concealed them. They tell me that for an hour I gazed on the loved one in stupid indifference. I can believe it well: the blow was stunning. Not a slave ventured to approach me; for even their dull natures respected the berewement this terrible calamity had brought on. Gradually Dominique placed himself before me, holding my infant in his right arm; for the left that clasped it when we broke from the burning pile, had been wounded by a random bullet. “What would you, Dominique?” I inquired, in tones of deep despondency. “Vengeance!” exclaimed the negro, in a voice of thunder. “Leave to woman’s hands the duties owing to the dead, and let us together hunt down the murderers. Vengeance! vengeance!” The voice of my faithful follower changed at once the current of my thoughts. I raised myself, looked proudly round, and called for food and wine. I ate bread--‘twas a form; I drank wine--that was reality. I seized my rifle, dagger, pistols; Dominique armed the hardiest of my slaves; and, before the sun rose, we set out to visit blood for blood.