Chapter Twelve.
A Night of Office.
As soon as Toussaint was out of hearing of his family and suite, he put his horse to its utmost speed. There was not a moment to be lost, if the peace of the island was to be preserved. Faster than ever fugitive escaped from trouble and danger, did the negro commander rush towards them. The union between the black and white races probably depended on his reaching Cap by the early morning—in time to prevent certain proclamations of Hédouville, framed in ignorance of the state of the colony and the people, from being published. Forty leagues lay between L’Étoile and Cap, and two mountain ridges crossed his road: but he had ridden forty leagues in a night before, and fifty in a long day; and he thought little of the journey. As he rode, he meditated the work of the next day, while he kept his eye awake, and his heart open, to the beauty of the night.
He had cleared the plain, with his trompette at his heels, before the woods and fields had melted together into the purple haze of evening; and the labourers returning from the cane-pieces, with their tools on their shoulders, offered their homage to him as he swept by. Some shouted, some ran beside him, some kneeled in the road and blessed him, or asked his blessing. He came to the river, and found the ford lined by a party of negroes, who, having heard and known his horse’s tread, above the music of pipe and drum, had thrown themselves into the water to point out the ford, and save his precious moments. He dashed through uncovered, and was lost in the twilight before their greeting was done. The evening star was just bright enough to show its image in the still salt-lake, when he met the expected relay, on the verge of the mountain woods. Thence the ascent was so steep, that he was obliged to relax his speed. He had observed the birds winging home to these woods; they had reached it before him, and the chirp of their welcome to their nests was sinking into silence; but the whirring beetles were abroad. The frogs were scarcely heard from the marshes below; but the lizards and crickets vied with the young monkeys in noise, while the wood was all alight with luminous insects. Wherever a twisted fantastic cotton-tree, or a drooping wild fig, stood out from the thicket and apart, it appeared to send forth streams of green flame from every branch; so incessantly did the fireflies radiate from every projecting twig.
As he ascended, the change was great. At length there was no more sound; there were no more flitting fires. Still as sleep rose the mountain-peaks to the night. Still as sleep lay the woods below. Still as sleep was the outspread western sea, silvered by the steady stars which shone, still as sleep, in the purple depths of heaven. Such was the starlight on that pinnacle, so large and round the silver globes, so bright in the transparent atmosphere were their arrowy rays, that the whole, vault was as one constellation of little moons, and the horse and his rider saw their own shadows in the white sands of their path. The ridge passed, down plunged the horseman, hurrying to the valley and the plain; like rocks loosened by the thunder from the mountain-top. The hunter, resting on the heights from his day’s chase of the wild goats, started from his sleep, to listen to what he took for a threatening of storm. In a little while, the child in the cottage in the valley nestled close to its mother, scared at the flying tramp; while the trembling mother herself prayed for the shield of the Virgin’s grace against the night-fiends that were abroad. Here, there was a solitary light in the plain; there, beside the river; and yonder, behind the village; and at each of these stations were fresh horses, the best in the region, and smiling faces to tender their use. The panting animals that were left behind were caressed for the sake of the burden they had carried, and of the few kind words dropped by their rider during his momentary pause.
Thus was the plain beyond Mirbalais passed soon after midnight. In the dark the horsemen swam the Artibonite, and leaped the sources of the Petite Rivière. The eastern sky was beginning to brighten as they mounted the highest steeps above Atalaye; and from the loftiest point, the features of the wide landscape became distinct in the cool grey dawn. Toussaint looked no longer at the fading stars. He looked eastwards, where the green savannahs spread beyond the reach of human eye. He looked northwards, where towns and villages lay in the skirts of the mountains, and upon the verge of the rivers, and in the green recesses where the springs burst from the hill-sides. He looked westwards, where the broad and full Artibonite gushed into the sea, and where the yellow bays were thronged with shipping, and every green promontory was occupied by its plantation or fishing hamlet. He paused, for one instant, while he surveyed what he well knew to be virtually his dominions. He said to himself that with him it rested to keep out strife from this paradise—to detect whatever devilish cunning might lurk in its by-corners, and rebuke whatever malice and revenge might linger within its bounds. With the thought he again sprang forward, again plunged down the steeps, scudded over the wilds, and splashed through the streams; not losing another moment till his horse stood trembling and foaming under the hot sun, now touching the Haut-du-Cap, where the riders had at length pulled up. Here they had overtaken the first trompette, who, having had no leader at whose heels he must follow, had been unable, with all his zeal, quite to equal the speed of his companion. He had used his best efforts, and showed signs of fatigue; but yet they had come upon his traces on the grass road from the Gros Morne, and had overtaken him as he was toiling up the Haut-du-Cap.
Both waited for orders, their eyes fixed on their master’s face, as they saw him stand listening, and glancing his eye over the city, the harbour, and the road from the Plain du Nord. He saw afar signs of trouble: but he saw also that he was not too late. He looked down into the gardens of Government-house. Was it possible that he would show himself there, heated, breathless, covered with dust as he was? No. He dismounted, and gave his horse to the trompettes, ordering them to go by the most public way to the hotel, in Place Mont Archer, to give notice of the approach of his secretary and staff; and thence to the barracks, where he would appear when he had bathed.
The trompettes would have gone round five weary miles for the honour of carrying messages from the Commander-in-chief through the principal streets of Cap. They departed with great zeal, while Toussaint ascended to the mountain-pool, to take the plunge in which he found his best refreshment after a long ride. He was presently walking leisurely down the sloping field, through which he could drop into the grounds of Government-house by a back gate, and have his interview with Hédouville before interruption came from the side of the town. As he entered the gardens, he looked, to the wondering eyes he met there, as if he had just risen from rest, to enjoy a morning walk in the shrubberies. They were almost ready to understand, in its literal sense, the expression of his worshippers, that he rode at ease upon the clouds.