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Horn, and making stupid charges against her husband. He knew that the three negroes he had met in Paris in the service of Mrs. Horn had once been his own slaves, held not by any right of law, but by brutal force, and he knew that the people with whom they were then travelling must have been in some way connected with his old comrades, the Rackbirds.
Farther on they found two or three more bodies stranded, and later in the day some Rackbirds who had been washed out to sea came back with the tide, and were found upon the beach. It was impossible, Cheditafa said, for any of them to have escaped from that raging torrent, which hurled them against the rocks as it carried them down to the sea.
That he had been talking to his old captain he did not doubt for a moment, and that that captain had again got the better of him he doubted no less. It may be stated here that, the evening before, the professor had had a long talk with Ralph regarding the Rackbirds and their camp. Professor Barré had heard something of the matter before, but many of the details were new to him.
There could be no doubt that the newcomers were the remainder of the party of Africans who had been enslaved by the Rackbirds, and the desire of the captain and his companions to know how they had got away, and what news they brought, was most intense. Maka now hurried forward, leading one of the strangers. "Great things they tell," said he. "This Cheditafa. He speak English good as me.
If there were any danger now, it was in the daytime, when some stray Rackbirds might come back, or the pilferer of the mound might return with companions. But if any such came, he had his little fort, two pistols, and a repeating rifle. At night he felt absolutely safe. There was no danger that could come by land or sea through the blackness of the night. Suddenly he sat up.
As for himself, he took an early nap in the evening, because at the very first break of dawn it would be necessary for him to be on the alert. He did not know how much he had depended upon the lake as a barrier of defence, but now that it had gone, he felt that the dangers which threatened them from the Rackbirds were doubled.
He had known times when he had been very much afraid, and among these stood preeminent the time when he had expected an attack from the Rackbirds. But then his fear was for others. When he was by himself it was a different matter. It was not often that he did not feel able to take care of his own safety.
But the Miranda did not remain in the cove the next night, and poor Inkspot looked with longing eyes upon the slowly departing spot on the sands where he knew the Rackbirds' storehouse was located.
But there was nothing of the sort there now. Every spar and sail must have been carried out to sea by the flood, for if they had been left on the shores of the stream the captain would have seen them. This was hard lines for Captain Horn. If the Rackbirds' vessel had been in sailing condition, everything would have been very simple and easy for him.
They had but one idea about the approaching boats: they believed that the men in them were Rackbirds coming to wreak vengeance upon them. The same idea had come into the mind of the captain. Some of the Rackbirds had gone back to the cove. They had known that there had been people there.
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