With her face covered by a veil, Aurore was seated on the deck; her head reclined upon her mother's breast, and she wept as if her heart was breaking.
Harry approached again; desperation lent him an eloquence that he knew not he possessed, and he urged his suit with the bearing of a gentleman, and with passion, truth, and tenderness. Du Plessis stood with arms folded, and, after hearing him in contemptuous silence—for he seemed to exult in his power to crush and mortify a Briton—ordered him at once to leave the ship, and added some coarse and ungenerous reflections on his country, and on his faith as a Protestant. Finding that pathos and argument alike proved futile, Harry became filled by a sudden fury, and unsheathed his sword.
"Listen to me, Monsieur du Plessis, you are both insolent and hard of heart," he exclaimed; "nothing but the love I bear Aurore, and the respect I am forced to have for you as her father, prevents me from running you through the body and killing you on the spot! You will tear her from me—my dear, dear Aurore! Be it so; but thus shall she see that I can never survive her loss!"
With these words, the desperate fellow dashed his sword at the feet of the startled planter, and springing overboard, sank instantly.
Boats were promptly lowered to pick him up, but he never rose again.*
* "His unfortunate father, who was in Kingston, when the news reached him, in vain offered a reward of £200 to any person who would bring him the body of his son; but it was never found."—Scottish Reg. 1794.
Aurore was borne to her cabin in a state of alternate insensibility and delirium, and in this condition she continued, when, on the evening of the third day, while the mountains of Hispaniola were in sight, Scipio and the other domestics, armed with knives, rose suddenly in the twilight, and, with circumstances of dreadful barbarity, murdered every white person on board, except the miserable girl on whom the "faithful" Scipio pounced as his own particular prey. The negroes then plundered and set fire to the ship, and, leaving the corpses to the spreading flames, went ashore in the largest boat, and, taking Aurore with them, joined the revolted slaves who were still in arms, and who, since the massacre of the whites in August, 1791, had made that beautiful isle a scene of death and desolation.
From that night all trace was lost for ever of the unfortunate Mademoiselle du Plessis.