Chapter Twenty Seven.
All Eye.
Day by day, in the internals of his occupation about the defence of the colony, did Toussaint repair to Cap Samana, to look eastwards over the sea. Day by day was he more sure, from the information that reached him, that the French could not be far-off. At length, he desired that his generals should be within call from Cotuy, a small town which stood on the banks of the Cotuy, near the western base of the mountainous promontory of Samana—promontory at low water, island at high tide.
All was yet dark on the eastern point of this mountain, on the morning of the 28th of December, when two watchmen, who had passed the night under the ferns in a cleft of the steep, came out to look abroad. On their mountain all was yet dark, for the stars overhead, though still rolling clear and golden—visible orbs in the empty depths of the sky—were so far dimmed by the dawn in the east as no longer to send down their shafts of light upon the earth. The point on which these watchmen stood was so high, that between them and the horizon the sea lay like half a world—an immeasurable expanse, spreading as if from a vast depth below up into the very sky. Dim and soundless lay the mass of waters—breaking, no doubt, as for ages past, against the rocky precipice below; but not so as to be heard upon the steep. If might have appeared dead, but that a ray from some quarter of the heaven, capriciously touching its surface, showed that it was heaving as was its wont. Eastwards, at the point of junction of sea and sky, a dusky yellow light shone through the haze of morning, as behind a curtain, and told that the sun was on his way. As their eyes became accustomed to the dim light (which was darkness compared to that which had visited their dreams among the ferns), the watchmen alternately swept the expanse with their glass, and pronounced that there was not a sail in sight.
“I believe, however, that this will be our day; the wind is fair for the fleet,” said Toussaint to Henri. “Go and bathe while I watch.”
“We have said for a week past that each would be the day,” replied Henri. “If it be to-day, however, they can hardly have a fairer for the first sight of the paradise which poets and ladies praise at the French court. It promises to be the loveliest day of the year. I shall be here again before the sun has risen.”
And Christophe retired to bathe in the waterfall which made itself heard from behind the ferns, and was hidden by them; springing, as they did, to a height of twenty feet and upwards. To the murmur and gush of this waterfall the friends had slept. An inhabitant of the tropics is so accustomed to sound, that he cannot sleep in the midst of silence: and on these heights there would have been everlasting silence but for the voice of waters, and the thunders and their echoes in the season of storms.
When both had refreshed themselves, they took their seat on some broken ground on the verge of the precipice, sometimes indulging their full minds with silence, but continually looking abroad over the now brightening sea. It was becoming of a deeper blue as the sky grew lighter, except at that point of the east where earth and heaven seemed to be kindling with a mighty fire. There the haze was glowing with purple and crimson; and there was Henri intently watching for the first golden spark of the sun, when Toussaint touched his shoulder, and pointed to the northwards. Shading his eyes with his hand, Christophe strove to penetrate the grey mists which had gathered there.