“Dominique had to go round with me.  The captain evidently did not want to give him a chance of speaking to anyone.  The mate and two of the sailors posted themselves at the gangway, so that the two blacks should not be able to talk to the niggers on board.  And now, sir, what is to be done next?”

“We will go below and talk it over, captain.

“You come down, too, George.  Yes, and Dominique.  He may be useful.

“Now, Hawkins,” he went on, when they had taken their seats at the table, “of course, I have been thinking it over all the morning, and I have come to the conclusion that our only chance now is to fight them with their own weapons.  As long as we lie here there is no chance whatever of Miss Greendale being brought on board again, so the chase now has got to be carried on on land.  If we go to work the right way, there is no reason why we should not be able to trace her.  I propose to take Lechmere and Dominique and the four black boatmen.  If we stain our faces a little, and put on a pair of duck trousers, white shirts, red sashes, and these broad straw hats I bought at San Domingo, we shall look just like the half-caste planters we saw in the streets there.  I should take Pedro, too, but you will want him to translate anything you have to say to Jake.

“I propose that as soon as it is dark tonight we muffle the oars of the dinghy, and row away and land lower down, say a mile or so; and then make off up into the hills before tomorrow morning.  Dominique will try to find out something by inquiring at some of the huts of the blacks.  They are not likely to know, but if he offers them a handsome reward to obtain news for him, they will go down to the villages and ferret out something.  The people there would not be likely to know where they have been taken, but they would be able to point out the direction in which they went on starting.  Then we could follow that up, and inquire again.

“We might take a couple of the villagers with us.  Belonging here, they would have more chance of getting news from other blacks than strangers would have.”

“Don’t you think, sir, that it would be as well to have four or five men with you?” Hawkins said.  “There is no doubt this fellow that you are after is a desperate chap, and he may have got a strong body of these blacks as a guard.  He might suspect that, after having pursued him all this way, you might try to follow him on land.  You could put the men in hiding somewhere every day while you were making inquiries, and they would be mighty handy if it came to fighting, which it seems to me it is pretty sure to do before you see the lady off.”