nch, tolerably straight, and about ten feet long,
and bring it here as quickly as you can."

"Ay, ay, sir," answered Tom, starting off on his errand at once.

Whilst he was gone, George spread out the canvas upon the ground, and,
with the aid of a pocket-knife, which he had seen lying about in the
stable that evening, and had taken the liberty of appropriating,
proceeded to roughly shape a hammock out of the material, leaving enough
canvas at each end to form, with the rope, an eye, through which to pass
the branch from which he intended it to be slung.

He had hardly finished his preparations when Tom reappeared with the
waggon-pole, which he had found fortunately unbroken.

"Will this do, sir?" asked Tom.

"The very thing," was George's delighted reply. "Now, Walford," he
continued, "lie down on that canvas, old fellow, and we'll soon have you
slung comfortably in your hammock between us, where you will travel
without much pain to your poor chest. That's it; now, Tom, pass the end
of the pole through this eye; capital! now through the other; that's
your sort! Now I'll take the fore end of the pole and you the after
end; lift handsomely; have you got your end on your shoulder? Then off
we go. We have not such a very great distance to travel--only some
twenty miles or so--but we must get over the ground as quickly as
possible; for when once nine o'clock to-morrow morning has passed, we
may make certain that they'll be after us; so we must reach the coast by
that time, or soon after it, if we wish to get clear off."

And in this manner, with Walford slung in his impromptu hammock between
them, George and Tom set off upon the wearisome journey which lay before
them, and which, they fondly hoped, was to end in the absolute recovery
of their liberty.

_Tramp, tramp; splash, splash_; on they trudged,--stumbling over the
roots of trees, tripping over the long, tough, straggling creepers which
crossed their path, sometimes brought-up "all standing" and
half-strangled by the cord-like _llianas_ which hung festooned from tree
to tree, their naked feet and legs torn by thorns and stabbed by the
spines of the wild cactus--in thick impenetrable darkness for a couple
of hours, and then the clouds suddenly vanished away on the wings of the
land-breeze, the stars reappeared, the soft silvery rays of the moon
streamed down once more through the gaps in the foliage, and the weary
fugitives flung themselves down upon the sodd