“General Dessalines, to your command in the west! Preserve your line of messengers from Leogane to my gate at Pongaudin, and let me not want for tidings.”
The tramp of Dessalines’ horse next died away.
“General La Plume, it is probable that your eye will have to be busier than your hands. You will be ever ready for battle, of course; but remember that I rely on you for every point of the south-west coast being watched, from Leogane round to Aux Cayes. Send your communications through Dessalines’ line of scouts.”
La Plume withdrew, and Toussaint gazed after him in reverie, till he was out of sight.
“And I?” said Clerveaux, the only general officer now left in attendance.
“Your pardon, General Clerveaux. This your department in the east is likely at present to remain tranquil, as I forewarned you. I now forewarn you that it may hereafter become the seat of war, when you will have your day. Meantime, I may at any time call upon your reserve; and you will take care that the enemy shall find no solace in your department, if they should visit it. Let it be bare as the desert before them. Farewell; I leave you in command of the east.”
Clerveaux made his obeisance with an alacrity which caused Toussaint to say to himself, as he mounted—
“Is he glad that the hour is come, or that his post is in the rear of the battle?”
Toussaint’s own road lay homewards, where he had assembled the choicest troops, to be ready for action on any point where they might first be wanted, and where the great body of the cultivators, by whom his personal influence was most needed, were collected under his eye. As he now sped like the lightning through the shortest tracks, his trompettes proclaiming the invasion through all the valleys, and over all the plains as they went, he felt strong and buoyant in heart, like the eagle overhead, which was scared from its eyrie in Cibao by the proclamation of war. For ever, as he rode, the thought recurred to fire his soul, “He is my rival now, and no longer my chief. I am free. It is his own act, but Bonaparte has me for a rival now.”