s on board. And now,
sir, what is to be done next?"

"We will go below and talk it over, captain.

"You come down, too, George. Yes, and Dominique. He may be useful.

"Now, Hawkins," he went on, when they had taken their seats at the
table, "of course, I have been thinking it over all the morning,
and I have come to the conclusion that our only chance now is to
fight them with their own weapons. As long as we lie here there is
no chance whatever of Miss Greendale being brought on board again,
so the chase now has got to be carried on on land. If we go to work
the right way, there is no reason why we should not be able to
trace her. I propose to take Lechmere and Dominique and the four
black boatmen. If we stain our faces a little, and put on a pair of
duck trousers, white shirts, red sashes, and these broad straw hats
I bought at San Domingo, we shall look just like the half-caste
planters we saw in the streets there. I should take Pedro, too, but
you will want him to translate anything you have to say to Jake.

"I propose that as soon as it is dark tonight we muffle the oars of
the dinghy, and row away and land lower down, say a mile or so; and
then make off up into the hills before tomorrow morning. Dominique
will try to find out something by inquiring at some of the huts of
the blacks. They are not likely to know, but if he offers them a
handsome reward to obtain news for him, they will go down to the
villages and ferret out something. The people there would not be
likely to know where they have been taken, but they would be able
to point out the direction in which they went on starting. Then we
could follow that up, and inquire again.

"We might take a couple of the villagers with us. Belonging here,
they would have more chance of getting news from other blacks than
strangers would have."

"Don't you think, sir, that it would be as well to have four or
five men with you?" Hawkins said. "There is no doubt this fellow
that you are after is a desperate chap, and he may have got a
strong body of these blacks as a guard. He might suspect that,
after having pursued him all this way, you might try to follow him
on land. You could put the men in hiding somewhere every day while
you were making inquiries, and they would be mighty handy if it
came to fighting, which it seems to me it is pretty sure to do
before you see the lady off."

"Well, perhaps it would be best, Hawkins; and, as you say, by
keeping them hid all