Night had by this time fairly set in; the stars were just beginning to peep out from the deepening blue of the cloudless vault above them, and the moon, in her first quarter, and hanging almost in the zenith, was already flooding the scene with her soft silvery radiance. It promised to be a magnificent night for their enterprise, though excessively close and hot; and as they turned into the main road leading into Havana, and left the estate fairly behind them, George and the lad Tom felt their spirits rising and their pulses bounding with joyous anticipation of a speedy return to freedom. Whilst harnessing the mules, Leicester had rapidly turned over in his mind the _pros_ and _cons_ of the situation, and had come to the conclusion that it would be necessary in the first instance to proceed some three or four miles on the road toward Havana. This necessity arose from the circumstance that the planter's house stood upon a slight eminence commanding a perfect view of the road for that distance, and as Leicester could not possibly be sure that some one might not be idly watching, from the verandah, the progress of the waggon as long as it remained in view, he deemed it only common prudence to keep to the road until he had passed completely out of the range of any such chance watchers. This done, he intended to turn sharp off and make the best of his way southward, utilising the waggon and mules for as great a distance as possible, and then abandoning them and pressing forward on foot. The distance which they would have to travel was not very great, the island being, according to such information as had been available to him, only some twelve and a half Spanish leagues, or about thirty English miles wide at that part. Thus, if they were fortunate in their choice of a route, so as to be able to use the waggon for the whole distance, they might succeed in reaching the southern shore of the island before their escape was so much as suspected. George explained all this to Tom as the mules trotted cheerily along the road, and by the time that the plan of escape had been fully elucidated, they had reached a point where they might with perfect safety branch off and make their way to the southward. This they did at once, branching square off to the westward in the first instance, until they were about a mile distant from the road, and completely hidden by the bush from the observation of any one upon it, and then turning in a southerly direction. A dense belt of forest then lay before them, at a distance of some six miles, with a lofty hill-top rising behind it, and toward this latter object George now headed the mules as straight as the scattered clumps of bush would permit.