"More'n a mile, massa," he replied.
And then, as I ran, I looked more closely at the man whom fate had
made my comrade in this desperate adventure. He was an older man
than I had expected; very powerfully made, as his cast of the
buccaneer had proved; but his hair was white, and, short as was the
distance we had run, I could see that he would soon be laboring for
breath. But it was two miles to the big house, as he had called
Mistress Lucy's abode, and I did not despair of reaching the edge
of forest land before Vetch could make up on us, even if he started
the very moment he heard the alarm. If once we gained the forest,
we might perhaps blind our trail in a stream, and so gain time
enough for our further flight to the swamp.
We were running on a broad track that divided the sugar plantation,
and here and there negro laborers who had been roused from their
noontide sleep by the horn blast and the shot rose up to see what
was afoot. None of them offered to interfere. They stared at us for
the most part in silence, one or two of the older people crying out
that it was Uncle Moses on the run, and wondering at his companion
being a white man.
I took little note of them, for I was already anxious on behalf of
the old negro. We had six miles to go; could he hold out? 'Twas two
miles from the big house to the house we had left; a horseman could
cover the distance in little longer than it would take us to reach
the forest; and then we should have but one mile start in a race of
six.
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