Plotting in Pirate Seas

by Francis Rolt-Wheeler

There was a rustle of branches, and a negro colossus, of the low-browed, heavy-jawed type, plunged through the thicket and barred the path.

Bareheaded, barefooted, his shirt consisting of a piece of cloth with holes for head and arms, his trousers torn to tatters by thorns, the warder of the Citadel looked what he was, a Caco machete man, little removed from the ferocity of African savagery.

To his shout, the Cuban deigned no answer.

He broke a switch from a bush, walked toward the negro guard with a contemptuous look and lashed him across the face with the switch, ordering him to lead the way.

Stuart expected to see the Cuban cut down with one stroke of the machete.

Far from it. Cowed at once, the negro cringed, as to a master, and, without a word as to Manuel's authority, led the way up the trail.

A hundred yards higher, all sign of a path was lost. The negro warder was compelled to use his machete to cut a way through thorny underbrush and creepers in order to make a path for the "white's" feet.

The afternoon was well advanced when openings amid the trees showed, beetling overhead, the gray walls of the Citadel. An hour's further climbing brought them to the guard-house, where eight men watch continually, each relief for a period of a month, against the intrusion of strangers into Christophe's Citadel.

An irregularly disposed clump of posts, stuck into the ground, supported a rusted and broken tin roof, without walls, but boasting a brushwood pile on one side—such was the entire barracks of the La Ferrière garrison. The furniture consisted only of a log on which to sit, a few cooking utensils, and a pile of rags in the driest corner.

True, there was plenty of room in the Citadel. Many a chamber in the ruined place was dry and sheltered from the weather, many a corner was there where the watchers could have made themselves warm and comfortable. They were not forbidden to sleep there. On the contrary, they were encouraged. But never a one would do so. They declared the place haunted and were in a state of terror even to be near it.