“What else?”
“He killed sheep and swine and cattle, and drove away the horses; there’s never the hoof left walking about the place. Nothing but the stripped land is left ye.”
“But the slaves?”
“His lordship took them, too, to sell them in Jamaica.”
Captain Paul Jones turns white as linen three times bleached. His eyes are hard as jade. Then he tosses up his hands, with a motion of sorrow.
“My poor blacks!” he cries. “The plantation was to them a home, not a place of bondage. Now they are torn away, to die of pestilence or under the lash, in the cane fields of Jamaica. The price of their poor bodies is to swell the pockets of our noble English slave-trader. This may be Lord Dunmore’s notion of civilized war. For all that I shall one day exact a reckoning.” Then, resting his hand on old Duncan’s shoulder: “However, we have seen worse campaigns, old friend! We’ll do well yet! I’ve still one fortune—my sword; still one prospect—the prospect of laying alongside the enemy.”
CHAPTER X—THE COUNSEL OF CADWALADER
Philadelphia is experiencing a cool June, and in a sober, Quakerish way shows grateful for it. The windows of General Washington’s apartments, looking out into Chestnut Street, are raised to let in the weather and the urbane sun, not too hot, not too cool, casts a slanting glance into the room, as though moved of a solar curiosity concerning the mighty one who inhabits them. The sun, doubtless, goes his way fully satisfied; General Washington himself is there, in casual talk with the Marquis de Lafayette.