"Very well, then, that is settled. The five blacks, Lechmere and myself, and four of the sailors, will make a strong party. Serve muskets and cutlasses out to the blacks; and the same, with a brace of pistols, to each of the hands that go with us. While we are away let two of the men dress up in my white duck shirts and jackets, and in white straw hats. Let them always keep aft, and sit about in the deck chairs, and always go down below by the main companion. That will make them think that I am still on board; while if there is no one on the deck aft they will soon guess that we have landed. "You understand all that we have been saying, Dominique?" "Me understand, sar, and tink him bery good plan. Me suah to find out which way dat rascal hab gone. Plenty of black fellows glad to earn two dollar to guide us. Dey no money here. Two dollars big sum to them." "All right, Dominique, but we won't stick at two dollars. If it were necessary I would pay two hundred cheerfully for news." "We find dem widout dat," the black said, confidently. "Not good offer too much. If black man offered two dollars he bery glad. If offered twenty he begin to say to himself, 'Dis bery good affair; perhaps someone else give forty.'" "There is something in that, Dominique. Anyhow I shall leave that part of the business to you. As a rule, I shall keep in hiding with the boatmen and sailors all day. I shall be no good for asking questions, for I don't know much French, and the dialect the negroes of these islands speak is beyond me altogether. I cannot understand the boatmen at all." "Black men here bad, sar; not like dem in de other islands. Here dey tink themselves better than white men; bery ignorant fellows, sar. Most of dem lost religion, and go back to fetish. Bery bad dat. All sorts of bad things in dat affair. Kill children and women to make fetish. Bad people, sar, and dey are worse here than at San Domingo." There was nothing to do all day, but to sit on deck and watch the brigantine. Most of the blacks had been landed, and only three or four sailors remained on watch on deck. Frank and George Lechmere, in their broad straw hats, sat and smoked in the deck chairs; the former's eyes wandering over the mountains as if in search of something that might point out Bertha's hiding place. The hills were for the most part covered with trees, with here and there a little clearing and a patch of cultivated ground, with two or three huts in the centre. With the glasses solitary huts could be seen, half hidden by trees, here and there; and an occasional little wreath of light smoke curling up showed that there were others entirely hidden in the forest.