CHAPTER XXXVII.
Twilight, the beautiful serene tropical twilight, was just gathering on Wednesday evening, when the negroes of all the surrounding country, fresh from their daily work in the cane-pieces, with cutlasses and sticks and cudgels in their hands, began to assemble silently around Louis Delgado’s hut, in the bend of the mountains beside the great clump of feathery cabbage-palms. A terrible and motley crowd they looked, bareheaded and bare of foot, many of them with their powerful black arms wholly naked, and thrust loosely through the wide sleeve-holes of the coarse sack-like shirt which, with a pair of ragged trousers, formed their sole bodily covering. Most of the malcontents were men, young and old, sturdy and feeble; but among them there were not a few fierce-looking girls and women, plantation hands of the wildest and most unkempt sort, carelessly dressed in short ragged filthy kirtles, that reached only to the knee, and with their woolly hair tangled and matted with dust and dirt, instead of being covered with the comely and becoming bandana turban of the more civilised and decent household negresses. These women carried cutlasses too, the ordinary agricultural implement of all sugar-growing tropical countries; and one had but to glance at their stalwart black arms or their powerful naked legs and feet, as well as at their cruel laughing faces, to see in a moment that if need were, they could wield their blunt but heavy weapons fully as effectively and as ruthlessly in their own way as the resolute, vengeful men themselves. So wholly unsexed were they, indeed, by brutal field-labour and brutal affections, that it was hard to look upon them closely for a minute and believe them to be really and truly women.
The conspirators assembled silently, it is true, so far as silence under such circumstances is ever possible to the noisy demonstrative negro nature; but in spite of the evident effort which every man made at self-restraint, there was a low undercurrent of whispered talk, accompanied by the usual running commentary of grimaces and gesticulations, which made a buzz or murmur hum ceaselessly through the whole crowd of five or six hundred armed semi-savages. Now and again the women especially, looking down with delightful anticipation at their newly whetted cutlasses, would break out into hoarse ungovernable laughter, as they thought to themselves of the proud white throats they were going to cut that memorable evening, and the dying cries of the little white pickaninnies they were going to massacre in their embroidered lace bassinettes.
‘It warm me heart, Mistah Delgado, sah,’ one white-haired, tottering, venerable old negro mumbled out slowly with a pleasant smile, ‘to see so many good neighbour all come togedder again for kill de buckra. It long since I see fine gadering like dis. I mind de time, sah, in slavery day, when I was young man, just begin for to make lub to de le-adies, how we rise all togedder under John Trelawney down at Star-Apple Bottom, go hunt de white folk in de great insurrection. Ha, dem was times, sah—dem was times, I tellin’ you de trut’, me fren’, in de great insurrection. We beat de goomba drum, we go up to Mistah Pourtalès—same what flog me mudder so unmerciful dat de buckra judges even fine him—an’ we catch de massa himself, an’ we beat him dead wit stick an’ cutlass. Ha, ha, dem was times, sah. Den we catch de young le-adies, an’ we hack dem all to pieces, an’ we burn de bodies. Den we go on to odder house, take all de buckra we find, shoot some, roast some same we roast pig, an’ burn some in deir own houses. Dem was times, sah—dem was times. I doan’t s’pose naygur now will do like we do when I is young man. But dis is good meeting, fine meeting: we cry “Colour for colour,” “Buckra country for us,” an’ de Lard prosper us in de work we hab in hand! Hallelujah!’
One of the women stood listening eagerly to this thrilling recital of early exploits, and asked in a hushed voice of the intensest interest: ‘An’ what de end ob it all, Mistah Corella? What come ob it? How you no get buckra house, den, for youself lib in?’
The old man shook his head mournfully, as he answered with a meditative sigh: ‘Ah, buckra too strong for us—too strong for us altogedder; come upon us too many. Colonel Macgregor, him come wit plenty big army, gun an’ bay’net, an’ shoot us down, an’ charge us ridin’; so we all frightened, an’ run away hide in de bush right up in de mountains. Den dem bring Cuban bloodhound, hunt us out; an’ dem hab court-martial, an’ dem sit on Trelawney, an’ dem hang him, hang him dead, de buckra. An’ dem hang plenty. We kill twenty—twenty-two—twenty-four buckra; an’ buckra kill hundred an’ eighty poor naygur, to make tings even. For one buckra, dem kill ten, fifteen, twenty naygur. But my master hide me till martial law blow ober, because I is strong, hearty young naygur, an’ can work well for him down in cane-piece. Him say: “Doan’t must kill valuable property!” An’ I get off dat way. So dat de end ob John Trelawney him rebellion.’
If the poor soul could only have known it, he might have added with perfect truth that it was the end of every other negro rebellion too; the white man is always too strong for them. But hope springs eternal in the black breast as in all others, and it was with a placid smile of utter oblivion that he added next minute: ‘But we doan’t gwine to be beaten dis time. We too strong ourselbes now for de soldier an’ de buckra. Delgado make tings all snug; buy pistol, drill naygur, plan battle, till we sure ob de victory. De Lard wit us, an’ Delgado him serbant.’
At that moment, Louis Delgado himself stepped forward, erect and firm, with the unmistakable air of a born commander, and said a few words in a clear low earnest voice to the eager mob of armed rioters. ‘Me fren’s,’ he said, ‘you must obey orders. Go quiet, an’ make no noise till you get to de buckra houses. Doan’t turn aside for de rum or de trash-houses; we get plenty rum for ourselbes, I tellin’ you, when we done killed all de buckra. Doan’t set fire to de house anywhere; only kill de male white folk; we want house to lib in ourselbes, when de war ober. Doan’t burn de factories; we want factory for make sugar ourselves when de buckra dribben altogedder clean out ob de country. Doan’t light fire at all; if you light fire, de soldiers in Port-ob-Spain see de blaze directly, an’ come up an’ fight us hard, before we get togedder enough black men to make sure ob de glorious victory. Nebber mind de buckra le-ady; we can get dem when we want dem. Kill, kill, kill! dat is de watchword. Kill, kill, kill de buckra, an’ de Lard delibber de rest into de hands ob his chosen people.’ As he spoke, he raised his two black hands, palm upwards, in the attitude of earnest supplication, towards the darkening heaven, and flung his head fervently backward, with the whites of his big eyes rolling horribly, in his unspoken prayer to the God of battles.
The negroes around, caught with the contagious enthusiasm of Delgado’s voice and mutely eloquent gesture, flung up their own dusky hands, cutlasses and all, with the self-same wild and expressive pantomime, and cried aloud, in a scarcely stifled undertone: ‘De Lard delibber dem, de Lard delibber dem to Louis Delgado.’
The old African gazed around him complacently for a second at the goodly muster of armed followers, to the picked men among whom Isaac Pourtalès was already busily distributing the pistols and the cartridges. ‘Are you ready, me fren’s?’ he asked again, after a short pause. And, like a deep murmur, the answer rang unanimously from that great tumultuous black mass: ‘Praise de Lard, sah, we ready, we ready!’
‘Den march!’ Delgado cried, in the loud tone of a commanding officer; and suiting the action to the word, the whole mob turned after him silently, along the winding path that led down by tortuous twists from the clump of cabbage-palms to the big barn-like Orange Grove trash-houses.
With their naked feet and their cat-like tread, the negroes marched along far more silently than white men could ever have done, toward the faint lights that gleamed fitfully beyond the gully. If possible, Delgado would have preferred to lead them straight to Orange Grove house, for his resentment burnt fiercest of all against the Dupuy family, and he wished at least, whatever else happened, to make sure of massacring that one single obnoxious household. But it was absolutely necessary to turn first to the trash-houses and the factory, for rumours of some impending trouble had already vaguely reached the local authorities. The two constables of the district stood there on guard, and the few faithful and trustworthy plantation hands were with them there, in spite of Mr Dupuy’s undisguised ridicule, half expecting an insurgent attack that very evening. It would never do to leave the enemy thus in the rear, ready either to attack them from behind, or to bear down the news and seek for aid at Port-of-Spain. Delgado’s plan was therefore to carry each plantation entire as he went, without allowing time to the well-affected negroes to give the alarm to the whites in the next one. But he feared greatly the perils and temptations of the factory for his unruly army. ‘Whatebber else you do, me fren’s,’ the old African muttered more than once, turning round beseechingly to his ragged black followers, ‘doan’t drink de new rum, an’ doan’t set fire to de buckra trash-houses.’
At the foot of the little knoll under whose base the trash-houses lay, they came suddenly upon one of the faithful field-hands, Napoleon Floreal, whose fidelity Delgado had already in vain attempted with his rude persuasions. The negroes singled him out at once for their first vengeance. Before the man could raise so much as a sharp shout, Isaac Pourtalès had seized him from behind and gagged his mouth with a loose bandana. Two of the other men, quick as lightning, snatched his arms, and held them bent back in a very painful attitude behind his shoulders. ‘If you is wit us,’ Delgado said, in a hoarse whisper, ‘lift your right foot, fellah.’ Floreal kept both feet pressed doggedly down with negro courage upon the ground. ‘Him is traitor, traitor!’ Pourtalès muttered, between his clenched teeth. ‘Him hab black skin, but white heart. Kill him, kill him!’
In a second, a dozen angry negroes had darted forward, with their savage cutlasses brandished aloft in the air, ready to hack their offending fellow-countryman into a thousand pieces. But Delgado, his black hands held up with a warning air before them, thundered out in a tone of bitter indignation: ‘Doan’t kill him!—doan’t kill him! My children, kill in good order. Dar is plenty buckra for you to kill, witout want to kill your own brudder. Tie de han’kercher around him mout’, bind rope around him arm an’ leg, an’ trow him down de gully yonder among de cactus jungle!’
As he spoke, one of the men produced a piece of stout rope from his pocket, brought for the very purpose of tying the ‘prisoners,’ and proceeded to wind it tightly around Floreal’s body. They fastened it well round arms and legs; stuffed the bandana firmly in his mouth so as to check all his futile attempts at shouting, and rolled him over the slight bank of earth, down among the thick scrub of prickly cactus. Then, as the blood spurted out of the small wounds made by the sharp thorns, they gave a sudden low yell, and burst in a body upon the guardians of the trash-houses.
Before the two black policemen had time to know what was actually happening, they found themselves similarly gagged and bound, and tossed down beside Napoleon Floreal on the prickly cactus bed. In a minute, the insurgents had surrounded the trash-houses, cut down and captured the few faithful negroes, and marched them along unwillingly in their own body, as hostages for the better behaviour of the Orange Grove house-servants.
‘Now, me fren’s,’ Delgado shouted, with fierce energy, ‘down wit de Dupuys! We gwine to humble de proud white man! We must hab blood! De Lard is wit us! He hat’ put down de mighty from deir seats, an’ hat’ exalted de lowly an’ meek!’
But as he spoke, one or two of the heaviest-looking among the rioters began to cast their longing eyes upon the unbroached hogsheads. ‘De rum, de rum!’ one of them cried hoarsely. ‘We want suffin for keep our courage up. Little drop o’ rum help naygur man well to humble de buckra.’
Delgado rushed forward and placed himself resolutely, pistol in hand, before the seductive hogsheads. ‘Whoebber drink a drop ob dat rum dis blessed ebenin’,’ he hissed out angrily, ‘before all de Dupuys is lyin’ cold in deir own houses, I shoot him dead here wit dis very pistol!’
But the foremost rioters only laughed louder than before, and one of them even wrenched the pistol suddenly from his leader’s grasp with an unexpected side movement. ‘Look hyar, Mistah Delgado,’ the man said quietly; ‘dis risin’ is all our risin’, an’ we has got to hab voice ourselbes in de partickler way we gwine to manage him. We doan’t gwine away witout de rum, an’ we gwine to break just one little pickanie hogshead.’ At the word, he raised his cutlass above his head, and lunging forward with it like a sword, with all his force, stove in one of the thick cross-pieces at the top of the barrel, and let the liquor dribble out slowly from the chink in a small but continuous trickling stream. Next moment, a dozen black hands were held down to the silent rill like little cups, and a dozen dusky mouths were drinking down the hot new rum, neat and unalloyed, with fierce grimaces of the highest gusto. ‘Ha, dat good!’ ran round the chorus in thirsty approbation: ‘dat warm de naygur’s heart. Us gwine now to kill de buckra in true earnes’.’
Delgado stood by, mad with rage and disappointment, as he saw his followers, one after another, scrambling for handful after handful of the fiery liquor, and watched some of them, the women especially, reeling about foolishly almost at once from the poisonous fumes of the unrefined spirit. He felt in his heart that his chances were slipping rapidly from him, even before the insurrection was well begun, and that it would be impossible for a crowd of half-drunken negroes to preserve the order and discipline which alone would enable them to cope with the all-puissant and regularly drilled white men. But the more he stormed and swore and raved at them, the more did the greedy and uncontrolled negroes, now revelling in the unstinted supply, hold their hands to the undiminished stream, and drink it off by palmfuls with still deeper grunts and groans of internal satisfaction. ‘If it doan’t no hope ob conquer de island,’ the African muttered at last with a wild Guinea oath to Isaac Pourtalès, ‘at anyrate we has time to kill de Dupuys—an’ dat always some satisfaction.’
The men were now thoroughly inflamed with the hot new rum, and more than one of them began to cry aloud: ‘It time to get to de reg’lar business.’ But a few still lingered lovingly around the dripping hogshead, catching double handfuls of the fresh spirit in their capacious palms. Presently, one of the women, mad with drink, drew out a short pipe from her filthy pocket and began to fill it to the top with raw tobacco. As she did so, she turned tipsily to a man by her side and asked him for a light. The fellow took a match in his unsteady fingers and struck it on a wooden post, flinging it away when done with among a few small scraps of dry trash that lay by accident upon the ground close by. Trash is the desiccated refuse of cane from which the juice has been already extracted, and it is ordinarily used as a convenient fuel to feed the crushing-mills and boil the molasses. Dry as tinder, it lighted up with a flare instantaneously, and raised a crackling blaze, whose ruddy glow pleased and delighted the childish minds of the half-drunken negroes. ‘How him burn!’ the woman with the pipe cried excitedly. ‘Sposin’ we set fire to de trash-house! My heart, how him blaze den! Him light up all de mountains! Burn de trash-house! Burn de trash-house! Dat pretty for true! Burn de trash-house!’
Quick as lightning, the tipsiest rioters had idly kicked the burning ends of loose trash among the great stacked heaps of dry cane under the big sheds; and in one second, before Delgado could even strive in vain to exert his feeble authority, the whole mass had flashed into a single huge sheet of flame, rising fiercely into the evening sky, and reddening with its glow the peaks around, like the lurid glare of a huge volcano. As the flames darted higher and ever higher, licking up the leaves and stalks as they went, the negroes, now fairly loosed from all restraint, leaped and shrieked wildly around them—some of them half-drunk, others absolutely reeling, and all laughing loud with hideous, wild, unearthly laughter, in their murderous merriment. Delgado alone saw with horror that his great scheme of liberation was being fast rendered ultimately hopeless, and could only now concentrate his attention upon his minor plan of personal vengeance against the Dupuy family. Port-of-Spain would be fairly roused by the blaze in half an hour, but at least there was time to murder outright the one offending Orange Grove household.
For a few minutes, helpless and resourceless, he allowed the half-tipsy excited creatures to dance madly around the flaring fire, and to leap and gesticulate with African ferocity in the red glare of the rapidly burning trash-house. ‘Let dem wear out de rum,’ he cried bitterly to Pourtalès. ‘But in a minute, de Dupuys gwine to be down upon us wit de constables an’ de soldiers, if dem doan’t make haste to kill dem beforehand.’
Soon the drunken rioters themselves began to remember that burning trash-houses and stealing rum were not the only form of amusement they had proposed to themselves for that evening’s entertainment. ‘Kill de buckra!—kill de buckra!’ more than one of them now yelled out fiercely at the top of his voice, brandishing his cutlass. ‘Buckra country for us! Colour for colour! Kill dem all! Kill de buckra!’
Delgado seized at once upon the slender opportunity. ‘Me fren’s,’ he shrieked aloud, raising his palms once more imploringly to heaven, ‘kill dem, kill dem! Follow me! Hallelujah! I gwine to lead you to kill de buckra!’
Most of the negroes, recalled to duty by the old African’s angry voice, now fell once more into their rude marching order; but one or two of them, and those the tipsiest, began to turn back wistfully in the direction of the little pool of new rum that lay sparkling in the glare like molten gold in front of the still running hogshead. Louis Delgado looked at them with the fierce contempt of a strong mind for such incomprehensible vacillating weakness. Wrenching his pistol once more from the tipsy grasp of the man who had first seized it, he pointed it in a threatening attitude at the head of the foremost negro among the recalcitrant drunkards. ‘Dis time I tellin’ you true,’ he cried fiercely, in a tone of unmistakable wrath and firmness. ‘De first man dat take a single step nearer dat liquor, I blow his brains out!’
Reckless with drink, and unable to believe in his leader’s firmness, the foremost man took a step or two, laughing a drunken laugh meanwhile, in the forbidden direction, and then turned round again, grinning like a baboon, toward Louis Delgado.
He had better have trifled with an angry tiger. The fierce old African did not hesitate or falter for a single second; pulling the trigger, he fired straight at the grinning face of the drunken renegade, killing him instantaneously. He fell like a log in the pool of new rum, and reddened the stream even as they looked with the quick crimson flow.
Delgado himself hardly paused a second to glance contemptuously at the fallen recalcitrant. ‘Now, me fren’s,’ he cried firmly, kicking the corpse in his wrath, and with his eye twitching in a terrible fashion, ‘whoebber else disobeys orders, I gwine to shoot him dead dat very minute, same as I shoot dat good-for-nuffin disobedient naygur dar! We has got to kill de buckra to-night, an’ ebbery man ob you must follow me now to kill dem ’mediately. De Lard delibber dem into our hand! Follow me, an’ colour for colour!’
At the word, the last recalcitrants, awed into sobriety for the moment by the sudden and ghastly death of their companion, turned trembling to their place in the rude ranks, and began once more to march on in serried order after Louis Delgado. And with one voice, the tumultuous rabble, putting itself again in rapid motion towards Orange Grove, shrieked aloud once more the terrible watchwords: ‘Colour for colour! Kill de buckra!’