For one moment, as the men closed in on him, Howard struggled with a furious desire to wrest a cutlass from one of them, and with it exact terms from the others. The odds, though great, were not necessarily overwhelming, and victory would mean much. Had he stood on equal terms before the law, he would have risked everything in an immediate fight.
But he did not stand even. Against him as a convict fighting for freedom, Forbes could throw the entire population of his colony; even Jackson might join in the unequal odds. The result of a struggle on that basis must be inevitable; Dorothy would lose her only defender. Later, when the time came, if it did come, to shift the fight to the defense of womanhood, he would have a better cause and might win allies. So he surrendered.
“Take him to the
