ut he was my father."

"See, all's well still at Salem," said Dyck waving a hand as though to
change the talk. "All's as we left it."

There in the near distance lay Salem, serene. All tropical life about
seemed throbbing with life and soaking with leisure.

"We were in time," he added. "The Maroons are still in ambush. The sun
is beginning to set though, and the trouble may begin. We shall get
there about sundown--safe, thank God!"

"Safe, thank God--and you," said Sheila's mother.

CHAPTER XXI. THE CLASH OF RACE

In the King's House at Spanish Town the governor was troubled. All his
plans and prophecies had come to naught. He had been sure there would
be no rebellion of the Maroons, and he was equally sure that his career
would be made hugely successful by marriage with Sheila Llyn--but the
Maroons had revolted, and the marriage was not settled!

Messages had been coming from the provost-marshal-general of reports
from the counties of Middlesex and Cornwall, that the Maroons were
ravaging everywhere and that bands of slaves had joined them with
serious disasters to the plantation people. Planters, their wives and
children had been murdered, and in some districts the natives were in
full possession and had destroyed, robbed and ravaged. He had summoned
his commander of the militia forces, had created special constables, and
armed them, and had sent a ship to the Bahamas to summon a small British
fleet there. He had also mapped out a campaign against the Maroons,
which had one grave demerit--it was planned on a basis of ordinary
warfare and not with Jamaica conditions in mind. The provost-marshal
warned him of the futility of these plans, but he had persisted in
them. He had later been shocked, however, by news that the best of his
colonels had been ambushed and killed, and that others had been made
prisoners and treated with barbarity. From everywhere, except one, had
come either news of defeat or set-back.

One good thing he immediately did: he threw open King's House to the
wounded, and set the surgeons to work, thereby checking bitter criticism
and blocking the movement rising against him. For it was well known he
had rejected all warnings, had persisted in his view that trust in the
Maroons and fair treatment of themselves and the slaves were all that
was needed.

As he walked in the great salon or hall of audience where the wounded
lay--over seventy feet long and thirty wide, with great height, to