"No time like the present. But it's best to get 'em asleep. We don't want no noise," said Black Bart, with deliberation. "Pinky," to the pink-eyed man, "jes' take a look upstairs and see if they are asleep."
Rob laid down and crouched still as a mouse while he heard Pinky ascend the creaking stairs, satisfy himself that the intended victims were asleep, and retreat again.
Then the boy awakened Jumbo. In a few words he apprised him of the situation. To Rob's great relief, the negro, in this dire emergency, seemed to be as self-possessed as he was cowardly in minor matters. Many natures are so constituted.
"What we gwine ter do, Marse Rob?" he breathed, crawling noiselessly about on his straw.
"There's a window over there," whispered Rob; "we'll have to drop through it and chance coming out safely."
"Lawsy sakes! S'posin' it looks out on one ob dem bottomless pitses lak yo' all near fell inter ter-night?"
"Can't be helped, it's the only way we can escape. Hark! They're coming now. Get over to the window with as little noise as you can."
Without another word the negro noiselessly wriggled across the floor to the window--a mere opening in the wall--that Rob had observed. At the same instant there came the "creak! creak!" of the staircase as one of the men below began to ascend the stairway.
There was a big bit of loose timber lying near Rob's straw. With a sudden flash of anger at the thought of the men's treachery, the lad snatched it up.
"They shan't get off scot free, anyhow," he decided within himself.
With the bulk of timber clutched in both his hands, ready poised for a blow, Rob waited by the opening at the head of the rickety stairway as the midnight assailant ascended.
A stubbly red-head protruded itself through the opening. The crucial moment had come.
"Take that!" cried Rob bringing down the bulk of timber with a resounding crack on the fellow's pate. He grunted, clutched at the sill of the opening for an instant, and then went toppling down the stairway in a heap.
A roar of fury and a rush of feet from below followed. But Rob did not wait for the sequel.
"Hope I haven't seriously injured the chap," he thought, as he sprinted for the window, "I hit a bit harder than I meant to."