"'Cos dere is no sound of de dogs," he replied.

"Should we hear them three miles away?"

"Oh, yes, massa; de wind carry de sound miles and miles."

"We have luck on our side, then. Can you run again?"

"Yes, massa. Po' Uncle Moses hain't no chicken now, but he hain't
done yet."

And then we set off again through the forest, at a more moderate
pace now, for the way ran no longer clear. The word "forest" to a
stay-at-home means a tract of soft, springy turf, with tall trees
and pleasant glades and clumps of bracken that shelter rabbits and
other small creatures of the woodland. But the forest of the West
Indies bears to our English forest the relation of a giant to a
dwarf. The fronds of the bracken grow to feet where we have inches;
weeds that with us would shelter a mouse would there oonceal an
elephant, and a creeping plant which in England would delay a man
only while he kicked its tendrils aside grows in Jamaica to such a
strength and tanglement that it would obstruct the passage of a
troop of horse.

This was somewhat in our favor. We could run where horses might
not. But I took little comfort from this, for where we went the
dogs would certainly follow. And we had not gone above a mile, as I
reckoned, when the howling sound came to our ears--a deep-toned
baying, faint and mellow, stealing through the umbrageous foliage
like the horns of some fairy host. The hounds had found our scent.