“Let us go back,” said she. “Juste is not here.”
“Yes he is,” said Denis. “However, go back if you like. I shall go fowling with Juste.” And he began to strip off his clothes.
His companions were of opinion, however, that a son of the Commander-in-chief must not sport with a farmer’s boy, without leave of parents or tutor; and they begged him to put on his clothes again, at least till leave was asked. Denis had never cared for his rank, except when riding by his father’s side on review-days; and now he liked it less than ever, as the pond lay gleaming before him, the fowl sailing and fluttering on the surface, and his dignity prevented his going among them.
“What makes you say that Juste is here?” said Génifrède.
“I have seen him take five fowl in the last five minutes.”
As he spoke, he plucked the top of a bulrush, and threw it with such good aim, that it struck a calabash which appeared to be floating among others on the surface of the pond. That particular calabash immediately rose, and the face of a negro child appeared, to the consternation of the fowl, whose splashing and screaming might be heard far and wide. Juste came out of the water, displaying at his belt the result of his sport. He had, as Denis had said, taken five ducks in five minutes by pulling them under the water by the feet, while lying near them with his head covered by the calabash. The little fellow was not satisfied with the admiration of the beholders; he ran homewards, with his clothes in his hand, Denis at his heels, and his game dangling from his waist, and dripping as he ran.
“Many a white would shudder to see that child,” said Moyse, as Juste disappeared. “That is the way Jean’s blacks wore their trophies during the first days of the insurrection.”
“Trophies!” said Génifrède. “You mean heads: heads with their trailing hair;” and her face worked with horror as she spoke. “But it is not for the whites to shudder, after what they did to Ogé, and have done to many a negro since.”
“But they think we do not feel as they do.”
“Not feel! O Christ! If any one of them had my heart before I knew you—in those days at Breda, when Monsieur Bayou used to come down to us!”