yawned, stretched himself, spat wearily, sat
up, spat again, got on his legs, and stood up,
within three foot of the shadow in which I
was hiding behind him.

I forgot the knife in my teeth,—I declare
solemnly, in the frightful suspense of that
moment, I forgot it—and doubled my fist as
if I was an unarmed man, with the purpose
of stunning him by a blow on the head if he
came any nearer. I suppose I waited, with
my fist clenched, nearly a minute, while he
waited, yawning and spitting. At the end of
that time, he made for his tent, and I heard
him (with what thankfulness no words can
tell!) roll himself down, with another yawn,
on his bed inside.

I waited—in the interest of us all—to
make quite sure, before I left, that he was
asleep again. In what I reckoned as about
five minutes' time, I heard him snoring, and
felt free to take myself and my little sleeping
comrade out of the prison, at last.

The drugged guards in the portico were
sitting together, dead asleep, with their backs
against the wall. The third man was lying
flat, on the landing of the steps. Their arms
and ammunition were gone: wisely taken by
our men—to defend us, if we were meddled
with before we escaped, and to kill food for
us when we committed ourselves to the river.

At the bottom of the steps I was startled
by seeing two women standing together. They
were Mrs. Macey and Miss Maryon: the
first, waiting to see her child safe; the
second (God bless her for it!) waiting to
see me safe.

In a quarter of an hour we were by the
river-side, and saw the work bravely begun:
the sailors and the marines under their
orders, labouring at the rafts in the shallow
water by the bank; Mr. Macey and Mr.
Fisher rolling down fresh timber as it was
wanted; the women cutting the vines,
creepers, and withies for the lashings. We
brought with us three more pair of hands to
help; and all worked with such a will, that,
in four hours and twenty minutes, by Mr.
Macey's watch, the rafts, though not finished
as they ought to have been, were still strong
enough to float us away.

Short, another seaman, and the ship's
boy, got aboard the first raft, carrying
with them poles and spare timber. Miss
Maryon, Mrs. Fisher and her husband,
Mrs. Macey and her husband and three
children, Mr. and Mrs. Pordage, Mr. Kitten,
myself, and women and children besides, to
make up eighteen, were the passengers on
the leading raft. The second raft, under the
guidance of the two other sailors, held
Serjeant Drooce (gagged, for he now threatened
to be noisy again), Tom Packer, the
two marines, Mrs. Belltott, and the rest of
the women and children, We all got on board
silently and quickly, with a fine moonlight
over our heads, and without accidents or
delays of any kind.

It was a good half-hour before the time
would come for the change of guard at the
prison, when the lashings which tied us to the
bank were cast off, and we floated away, a
company of free people, on the current of
an unknown river.

CHAPTER III.

THE RAFTS ON THE RIVER.

WE contrived to keep afloat all that night,
and, the stream running strong with us, to
glide a long way down the river. But, we
found the night to be a dangerous time for
such navigation, on account of the eddies and
rapids, and it was therefore settled next day
that in future we would bring-to at sunset,
and encamp on the shore. As we knew of
no boats that the Pirates possessed, up at the
Prison in the Woods, we settled always to
encamp on the opposite side of the stream,
so as to have the breadth of the river between
our sleep and them. Our opinion was, that
if they were acquainted with any near way
by land to the mouth of this river, they
would come up it in force, and re-take us or
kill us, according as they could; but, that if
that was not the case, and if the river ran by
none of their secret stations, we might escape.

When I say we settled this or that, I do
not mean that we planned anything with any
confidence as to what might happen an hour
hence. So much had happened in one night,
and such great changes had been violently
and suddenly made in the fortunes of many
among us, that we had got better used to
uncertainty, in a little while, than I dare say
most people do in the course of their lives.

The difficulties we soon got into, through the
off-settings and point-currents of the stream,
made the likelihood of our being drowned,
alone—to say nothing of our being retaken—
as broad and plain as the sun at noon-day to
all of us. But, we all worked hard at
managing the rafts, under the direction of
the seamen (of our own skill, I think we
never could have prevented them from
oversetting), and we also worked hard at making
good the defects in their first hasty construction
—which the water soon found out. While
we humbly resigned ourselves to going down,
if it was the will of Our Father that was in
Heaven, we humbly made up our minds, that
we would all do the best that was in us.

And so we held on, gliding with the stream.
It drove us to this bank, and it drove us to
that bank, and it turned us, and whirled us;
but yet it carried us on. Sometimes much
too slowly, sometimes much too fast, but yet
it carried us on.

My little deaf and dumb boy slumbered
a good deal now, and that was the case
with all the children. They caused very
little trouble to any one. They seemed, in
my eyes, to get more like one another, not
only in quiet manner, but in the face, too.
The motion of the raft was usually so much