 A Float with Henry Morgan. A float with Henry Morgan written for radio by Warren Barry and a George Edwards production. Jeffrey Hunter and the Negro hero plan to escape from the swamp and hide in the forgotten stone hut which is over the top of the hill. While out bringing in provisions, hero and Jeffrey slip away to see the hut. There, to Jeffrey's amazement, he finds Kitty being kept to prisoner. She briefly tells him what has transpired. But before he can release her, Dolores is seen returning and he has to leave. However, he promises to return and rescue her. Reaching hero, he tells him that they must escape that night. Release Kitty, kept to Dolores and return to Port Royal before Henry Morgan sails on his expedition. In the swamps, hero and Jeffrey listen to the storm and when the others have fallen into an exhausted sleep, they remove their fetters and quietly creep to the door. There, Jeffrey complains of dizziness and weakness and hero realizes that Jeffrey is in the grip of the dreaded fever. I can't take another step, hero. I didn't want to. I think I must have strained myself today. You ain't strained yourself at all, Mr. Jeffrey. You've been my sick man. What you've got is the fever. Then you go on, hero. Don't wait for me if, if I have the fever I'm as good as dead. I ain't going without you, Mr. Jeffrey. Do you know what they do to you if they find you with your fetters gone? They flog you night to death and then they throw you to the alligators alive. I'm not leaving you to that fate. No, sir. You'll have to put your best foot forward. I ain't forgetting you saved my life. You must come with me. No, you go, hero. Go before you're, you're talking with the others and, and they, they, they give the alarm. Chlorate the bee. It goes and falls like that at my feet. You've been my big and heavy man, but, hero, he's strong. Your legs won't carry you, so my legs will carry the both, eh? No, six if he ain't hot. Now, good Lord, please send us a flash of lightning. That's right. Thank you, Lord. You showed me the way to run. Me and my burden will find the way. Maybe the rain will cool Massif Jeffries' brow. Pulls it to his face. The ground is wet and slushy cold around his ankles. His great muscles strain beneath the velvet blackness of his skin with the added weight of the restless burning hot unconscious form that he carries in his arms. Anxiously, hero looks towards another stone hut, distinguishable in the darkness only by the lights which stream from its windows. A burst of laughter comes from there. Hero grins with satisfaction. The guards have shut themselves away with their cards and their rum. The storm deters any from venturing out to inquire into the condition of their charges. Waiting for another flash of lightning, hero takes note of his surroundings and direction. Then the storm merges his black body a night into one. The track runs steeply up the hill, his feet wade through the miniature torrent which the rain has made. But the wetness has made his heart happy. It will wash away that telltale odor which the bloodhounds in the bottle will seek in vain. Except for the thunder, the rain on the leaves, the wind in the branches, there is stillness in the jungle. All shapes and forms are swallowed up in the inky blackness to be occasionally revealed for an instant stark and white fearsome in heaven's moment light. Up the jungle path, hero struggles. The added burden together with a deeply buried superstitious fear of storms inherited from a race born deep in an African jungle, causes his foot to falter. A stumble is recovered from, but human limbs are tired. A heart is pounding beneath a black breast. Sweat is running down a black brow, trickling into large white eyes. Up and up the slushy path, his tusk becomes a labor. Arms and legs are growing numb with fatigue. A stagger comes to his gait and jeftly murmurs restlessly in his arms. Oh Lord, give me light and show me soon my journey's end. As though in answer the deadly white of lightning flashes from the sky showing the hilltop near at hand. I thank you Lord. Now hero leaves the track and breaks through the undergrowth towards where he knows the hut must lie. His simple soul offering prayers that he may be near his journey's end. Then a thought returns from that part of his mind which slumbers. Ah, remembers now. There's someone in that hut. Someone who's a friend of NASA Jeffrey. But I can't take him there. No sir. Didn't he say he had an enemy there too? I'd better not risk it. I'd better find some other place. Bewildered by this change of plan, hero blunders off in another direction. His eye is trying to pierce the gloom, looking for a place of safety to hide his friend who is in such need of aid. Till that linked limbs will go no further and he sinks with his burdened for ground. Quietly he lies there while the wind dies away at his ebbing strength. Slowly returns to his fatigue body and Jeffrey beside him mumbles and mumbles in his delirium. The urgent need for safety and security echoes in his mind. Oh Lord, show me place to hide. His eyes tear out into the blackness and the rain eases into a fine misty drizzle. While he stares, something seems to merge from the blackness and take shape. It is a tree, a giant centuries old whose very limbs seem to droop with age. I thank you, Lord. With strength born of hope, hero is on his feet, Jeffrey across his shoulders at his six of footing on the thick knoll trunk. Up he climbs, passing the lower limbs until he comes to a broad one hidden beneath the forest of leaves. And at sea, out in the bay at Port Royal, Morgan ships swing gently in the quietening swell and the lights of Port Royal flicker mystically through the thin soft rain. Now the wind has gone, all that is heard is the faint slap of the swell and the murmuring creaking of ships cradled in the now benign sea, their lights bobbing like will of the wisps of an Irish fog. Come in. Yes, what is it, the odds? What's wrong? Isn't everything all right? Oh yeah, everything seems to be in order. The ships are riding well at anger and the messages that have been flashed to me by Landon say everything is in readiness for sailing aboard the other ships. Well, you sail at daybreak. The storm didn't last as long as I thought. Now that is all the odds. You'd better have an early night. There plenty of work for you to do in the next few days. Yes, Captain. Well, what are you standing there for? Get about your business. There's just something, Captain, I wish to discuss. Well, what is it? Don't you see I'm busy working out details of the expedition? I'm away from Port Royal now. Time for I will chatter it over. My mind is occupied with serious business. Possibly, yes, the garden, Captain. But late this evening before we left Port Royal, you told me about your certain saving orders. Yes, I remember. You seemed reluctant to carry them out. Oh, it was that I was reluctant. It was only that I was thinking of your welfare, Captain. The men who had been left on shore, they didn't know about the new sailing time. These men are still ashore. I told you they had to stay ashore. You're concerned with the ship now, Captain. But, Captain, it was a rain that I should go back in a long book and round them up. You know, there's quite a serious loss of men which you can't afford. The seas are too heavy. Oh, no. But now the wind has died away. There's not even a sigh in the rigging, the sea. He's like a love long mother. And these men, they are in Port Royal. You're sailing away until you know not what danger and you'll need every man you can lay your hands upon. They'll be fighting. Yes, the arch. I like not to leave these men behind. All right, the arch. Go back to Port Royal with a squad of men and as many long boats as you can need and bring those stragglers back to the ship. That is all. Like a man reprieved at the last moment, Diaz bustles about organizing crews for the long boats. The lopsided smile lurks in his mouth, twisting one corner of his thin lips. An article hangs heavy in his pocket, the Aztec necklace, his passport to Cuba and fortune, and the satisfaction of his base and evil designs. The poem of pride sings in his heart as he thinks of his cleverness adduping Henry Morgan. Excitement makes his heart pound. The vision of Kitty, when he held her helpless and frightened as before him, a surge of domineering power rushes through him. Soon so soon she'll be completely at the mercy of his will, powerless against him, friendless in a strange land with none to turn to for aid. But Kitty at this moment is strangely at peace, lost in dreams of her own. For the first time since the nightmare which happened in the Dolphin Tavern, her heart is smiling. But Jeffrey Hunter has been. He has forgiven her. He knows the falseness of the woman with whom she has forced to share this hut. And he is going to save her from a life which is worse than a death. Her confidence in her rescue is like the faith of a child. And as she listened to the storm which howled outside, she knew and believed that tonight, Jeffrey would escape and carry her away. Soon at any moment he would come bursting in, release her from her bonds, and she would have his lips crushed in hers, feel the muscles beneath his thin shirt as her arms slid about him. Know that joyous pain which would rise from her heart till a choke in her throat and blind at her eyes in a rose pink haze. Have the feeling of a limb's grow weak and distant while in his arms. Such as her faith in her dreams. Doubt has no place in her mind. I knew you are not asleep. What is it you are thinking about? Surely my thoughts can be my own. Surely that much is left to me. You are different. I noticed that when I came back to the hut earlier today, and once or twice before darkness fell, I actually saw a faint suspicion of a smile. Why are you different? I told you my thoughts came home. Did anything happen while I was away? Anything which could have brought about this change happened? And exactly what could have happened? Didn't you find me as you left me? No, that is right. Nothing good happens in this place. But while I was out walking in the jungle, I saw a gang of convicts working on the hilltop, but they could not have come here. If they had come and found you here, you would not be smiling. No, you are right. Nothing could happen here, and soon we will be away. And the darkness returns both women to their thoughts and the rain drizzles down outside. The lorries dreams once more of the Aztec necklace, and Kitty returns to her exciting visions which are filled with Jeffrey. While far away, high up in an old knoll tree, on a broad limb, screams so carefully from without by a thick curtain of leaves. A white man murmurs incoherently and tries to toss his hot feverish body to and fro, but the tight vines tied by the watchful hero hold him firmly to the tree. As a mother tends a child so hero watches his friend, pain and sorrow in his eyes. His hands as soft and gentle as he feels the fevered brow. It's all a mistake. I couldn't wear it. I'll start and switch it. It's our Kitty. Advert, I love you. Yes, I do. It's a mighty bad thing to escape and die like this alone in the forest with just an old no good negro. It sure am bad. Poor message, Jeffrey. To die like this, it's sure am a mighty bad thing.