It was hot hot and salt--God of my fathers! it
was blood. But there was no time for consideration; the three figures
by this had been reinforced by six more, and they now, with a most
fiendish yell, jumped down into the hollow basin, and surrounded us.
"Lay down your arms," one of them shouted.
"No," I exclaimed; "we are British officers, and armed, and determined
to sell our lives dearly; and if you do succeed in murdering us, you may
rest assured you shall be hunted down by bloodhounds."
I thought the game was up, and little dreamed that the name of Briton
would, amongst the fastnesses of Haiti, have proved a talisman; but it
did so. "We have no wish to injure you, but you must follow us, and see
our general," said the man who appeared to take the lead amongst them.
Here two of the men scrambled up the face of the rock, and brought their
wounded comrade down from where he hung, and laid him on the bank; he
had been shot through the lungs, and could not speak. After a minute's
conversation, they lifted him on their shoulders; and as our guide and
Monsieur Pegtop had been instantly bound, we were only two to nine armed
men, and accordingly had nothing for it but to follow the bearers of the
wounded man, with our horses tumbling and scrambling up the river
course, into which, by their order, we had now turned.
We proceeded in this way for about half a mile, when it was evident that
the jaded beasts could not travel farther amongst the twisted trunks of
trees and fragments of rock with which the river--course was now
strewed.
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