nebrake."
"'Tis strange," I thought, "that these creatures have not more
compassion for their fellows whom we are hunting." To be sure, they were
mostly of the Household breed, between whom and the fresh-imported
Negroes held to field-service there is little sympathy. It escaped me to
tell you that we had with us yet more powerful and Trustworthy
auxiliaries than either our arms, our Horses, or our servants; being
none other than nine couples of ferocious Bloodhounds, of a breed now
extinct in Jamaica, and to be found only at this present moment, I
believe, in the island of Cuba. These animals, which were of a terrible
Ferocity and exquisitely keen scent, were kept specially for the purpose
of hunting Maroons,--such are the Engines which Tyrannical Slavery is
compelled to have recourse to,--and were purposely deprived of food
beyond that necessary for their bare sustenance, that they might more
fully relish the Recompense that awaited them when they had hunted down
their prey.

Gaily we went on our Road rejoicing, now by mere bridle-paths, and now
plunging our hardy little steeds right through the bristling underwood,
when there burst upon us one of those terrible Tornadoes, or Tempests of
wind and rain, so common in the Western Indies. The water came down in
great solid sheets, drenching us to the skin in a moment; the sky was
lit up for hundreds of miles round by huge blasts of lurid fire; the
wind tore great branches off trees, and hurled them across the bows of
our saddles, or battered our faces with their soaked leaves or sharp
prickles. The very Dogs were blinded and baffled by this tremendous
protest of nature; and in the very midst of the storm there broke from
an ambuscade a band of Maroons, three times as strong as our own, who
fell upon us like incarnate Demons as they were. Our hounds had found
their scent long before,--just after dinner, indeed,--and we had been
following it for some two hours;--even now it was Reeking close upon us,
but we little deemed how Near. I suppose that those Negro Rascals, whom
we had trusted so implicitly, and on whom we thought that we could
Depend so thoroughly, had Betrayed us. This was the second time in my
short Life that I fallen into an Ambuscade; and Lo! each time the
"Blacks" had been mixed up with my misadventure.

These naked Maroons cared nothing about the Storm, whose torrents ran
off their well-oiled carcasses like water off a Duck's back. There was a
very Devil o