ui etes-vous, jeunes gens?"

"Amis, j'espere," I replied readily, summoning to my aid a large
proportion of the French I had learned from Colonel Pinchard.

"Ou allez-vous donc?" was next asked.

This was a puzzler, for I could not remember the name of the fort, or,
indeed, of a castle in French. Another big negro had caught Toby Bluff,
and, of course, could elicit no information from him. They both
laughed, as I fancied, at my attempts to speak French. I wanted to
escape, if possible, without fighting; but when I found that we were
discovered, I put my hand to my belt to draw a pistol. It was
immediately grasped by my captors, and wrenched out of my hand,
exploding at the moment, though fortunately without injuring me. The
negro was lightly clad, and possessed of three times my strength, so
that I in vain struggled to free myself from him. Toby also was
completely overpowered, and they now began dragging us along up the
hill.

I felt very uncomfortable. We had failed in the object of our
expedition, and I thought we should either be knocked on the head by our
captors, or perhaps be shot for spies by the French, while, at all
events, if allowed to live, we should be kept as prisoners for months or
years to come. Worked up to desperation by these ideas, I struggled
violently to get free, calling to Toby to do the same. In my struggles,
I fortunately gave my captor a severe kick on the shins, when he,
instinctively stooping down to rub them, let go his hold. At the same
moment, on my telling Toby what I had done, he imitated my example, and
also getting free, off we set at full speed, pursued by the negroes.
Where we were going I could not tell, except that we were not running
towards the shore. The negroes, having stopped for a few moments to rub
their shins, came along almost as fast as we did, shrieking and shouting
out to us all the time to stop. The louder they shouted the faster we
ran, till we were brought up with the point of a bayonet, and the
challenge of:--

"Who goes there?"

"Friend--Doris!" I answered, recognising the voice of one of our
marines.

The negroes, hearing an Englishman speak, bolted off through a
plantation to the right, tumbling over each other, and had we been quick
about it, we might have made them both prisoners. The marine told us
that his party was a little farther in advance, that they had been
defeated in the attempt to storm the fort, and that Lieutenant Fig was