The native gendarmes in their uniforms so like that of the American marines were preserving order much as the pessimists had predicted. One of them, starched and ironed to the minute, approached an American distributor and asked, with the sweet-faced courtesy of a Southern lady of the old school, for one of the riding-whips which some merchant had contributed. “Here’s a fine fellow,” said the unadorned Santa Claus to himself, “a real soldier. He wants a whip to use on mounted duty, and so gentle-mannered a chap will make only proper use of it.” The gendarme accepted the gift with a polite bow and a grateful smile and marched back across the ring—to strike full in the face with all his force a pitiful old black woman who was being forced forward by the crush behind, and to rain blow after blow on her bare head and breast and on the naked infant she had brought on the invitation of the ticket clutched in its tiny hand. What was the good of protesting? He had been ordered to hold back the crowd, and as he had been forbidden to use the revolver strapped at his side, how else could he do so? If he had been checked in his onslaught, he would have spent the rest of the afternoon wondering what these strange Americans wanted, anyway.
By dint of superhuman exertions the white distributors succeeded in exchanging something or other for every ticket. But it was a sadly mis-gifted swarm of children who finally rescued themselves from the maelstrom. Tiny tots who had set their hearts on a cake or a package of candy held up the neckties they knew no use for with a “Pas bon pour moi! Donne gateau!” The greatest demand was for shoes. “Non, non, papa! soulier, soulier!” came incessant shrieks from the urchins who waved unwelcome gifts before the weary distributors. The gentlemen of color had continued to strew armfuls of presents upon the throng beyond the ropes. The minister with the lanky confederate had tossed him assorted wares enough to break the back of a Haitian donkey—a feat verging on the impossible. When there was nothing else left, he flung him several huge native baskets which a lady of the committee had loaned for the occasion. These he followed with the decorations snatched from the tree. Then he took to unscrewing from their sockets the electric light bulbs belonging to the company that had contributed the useless illuminations. This was too much even for the benevolent-featured man who had been cast for the rôle of Santa Claus. He gathered the slack of the minister’s immaculate trousers in one hand and set him down out of reach of further temptation.
The festivities were entirely over by the time the blazing-red tropical sun sank behind the mountainous range to the westward. The throng streamed out across the Champs de Mars like a lake of molten lead that had long been dammed up and had suddenly broken its dikes. Not a scrap even of the tickets that had been canceled by being torn in two remained. In Haiti everything has its commercial value. For days to come little heaps of these bits of cardboard would be offered for sale by the incredibly ragged old women of the more miserable market-places, to be made use of the voodoo gods know how. Among the last of the gentlemen of color to leave the platform was a pompous being resplendent in Port au Prince’s most fashionable raiment. He was a graduate of the Sorbonne, a political power in the Black Republic, an officer of the Rotary Club, and the editor of Haiti’s principal newspaper. In one hand, which he held half concealed beneath the tails of his frock-coat, he grasped a dozen bright-colored hair-ribbons and several silk handkerchiefs which he had filched from the basket of presents that had been intrusted to him for distribution.
CHAPTER VI
THE DEATH OF CHARLEMAGNE
The word caco first appears in Haitian history in 1867. The men who took to the bush in the insurrection against President Salnave adopted that pseudonym, and nicknamed zandolite those who supported the government. The semi-savage insurrectionists, flitting at will through the rugged interior of the country, indifferent alike to the thorny jungle and the precipitous mountains, saw in themselves a likeness to the Haitian bird which flies freely everywhere, and in their opponents a similarity to the helpless caterpillars on which it feeds. The two terms have persisted to this day.
Haiti has never since been entirely free from cacos, though there have been occasional short periods when the country has been spared their ravages. Let a new president lose his popularity, however, or some ambitious rascal raise the banner of revolt, and the bandit-revolutionists were quick to flock together, beginning their operations as soon as the mangos were ripe enough to furnish them subsistence. With the exception of a few ephemeral leaders with more or less of the rudiments of education, the cacos are a heterogeneous mob of misguided wretches who have been cajoled or forced into revolt by circumstances of coercion. Ragged, penniless, illiterate fellows in the mass, they gather in bands varying from a score to thousands in number, depending on the reputation, persuasiveness, or power of compulsion of their self-appointed leaders. The latter, though in some cases men of standing, are more often as illiterate as their followers. Now and again one of them, usually with some Caucasian blood in his veins, has personal ambitions either of making himself President of Haiti in the long-approved manner, or at least of becoming powerful enough to force the Government to appoint him ruler of a province or of a smaller district. Others are merely the agents of disgruntled politicians or influential “respectable citizens” of Port au Prince or others of the larger cities, who secretly supply funds to the active insurrectionists.
The president of Haiti
A Haitian gendarme