leaping from a window, he made a rush for the high fence that enclosed the yard, throwing down the soldiers in his way. He cleared the fence at a bound and ran across the open field that separated him from the forest. A shower of musket balls fell around him. "Catch or kill him!" was shouted behind him. But the light, agile Creole, with the Creole hunter's training from infancy, was more than a match for his pursuers in such a race as that. He gained the woods, a swamp, while they were crossing the field, spreading out as they ran to shut him in. He sprang over the boggy earth, into the swamp, until his feet, sinking deeper and deeper, clogged, and stuck. The Britons were gaining; had reached the swamp. He could hear them panting and blowing, and the orders which made his capture inevitable. There was but one chance; he sprang up a cypress tree, and strove for the thick moss and branches overhead. Half-way up, he heard a whimpering below. It was the voice of his dog, his favourite setter, whining, fawning, and looking up to him with all the pathos of brute fidelity. There was no choice; it was her life or his, and with his, perhaps the surprise and capture of the city. Dropping to the earth, he seized a billet of wood, and aimed one blow between the setter's devoted eyes; with the tears in his own eyes, he used to relate. To throw the body to one side, snatch some brush over it, spring to the tree again, was the work of an instant. As he drew the moss around his crouching figure, and stilled his hard breathing, the British floundered past. When they abandoned their useless search, he slid from his covert, pushed through the swamp to the next plantation, and carried the alarm at full speed to the city.
