On him, and this flank movement, I principally placed my hopes of success; from the point he could attain, he was to throw a shower of hand-grenades into the camp, and then, under cover of a volley, rush down among its dingy occupants with the charged bayonet, while I attacked them from the pathway at the same moment.
The grenades, which have now unaccountably sunk into disuse, were then much used by our regiment, and by all grenadier companies. They are hollow balls or shells, two inches and a half in diameter, which, after being charged with fine powder, are set on fire by means of a slender fuse driven into the touch-hole. On exploding, it carries mutilation and death to all in its vicinity.
I turned to the peak of La Souffrière; the time was critical. The rising moon filled all the clear sky beyond the sulphur mountain with a liquid light, amid which the brightest stars were lost. In ten minutes she would be above its peak, from which a stupendous column of black smoke was now ascending for miles into the pure blue sky.
Softly we drew near the negro fortress, and I could see among the dense mangroves and shrubbery the occasional glitter of arms, as our left subdivision ascended the height, while we toiled straight forward, over rocks and stones, and matters less pleasant—such as the mutilated and charred remains of the white population who had fallen victims to the worshippers of the Fetish, and whose cloven caputs were strung around his monstrous visage. Snakes hissed among the long grass, frogs squattered, and gorged rats and land-crabs scampered away by dozens on all sides, as we approached the palisades.
Suddenly a shrill yell, and the explosion of a musket, the ball of which whistled past me, informed us that the black sentinel who watched the road that led through the Dos d'Ane had perceived us, just as I formed the subdivision in line, rank entire, or what is often termed in Indian file, to show a greater front.
"Forward men," I exclaimed; "down with the palisades, and at them with the bayonet!"
With a cheer we rushed on; six men with sharp hatchets assailed the bamboo palisade, which fell like reeds before their sturdy blows; and just as Scipio and his sooty ragamuffins hurried to defend the gap, a loud hurrah on our left, and the explosion of forty hand-grenades that fell whizzing through the darkness, each bursting among them with a loud report and a ruddy glare, paralyzed the savages, and in a moment struck them with a panic, which a combined cross-fire, and an attack in front and flank with the charged bayonet, completed. They threw down their arms and fled by a passage on the other side of their pah, or camp, abandoning to us all their wigwams, their accumulated plunder, the idol, their fetishes, and what was of much more importance to me, their miserable prisoner, old Monsieur George de Thoisy, whom we found tied by manilla ropes, and lying almost senseless with fear, in expectation of a barbarous death. Scipio was overtaken by Sergeant Drumbirrel, who, as he stumbled down the rocks, ran three feet of his pike through his body and killed him on the spot.
By the explosion of the grenades and by the cross-fire we had poured into the place, nearly four hundred blacks were killed or wounded within it. Many of the latter were bayoneted by our men, whose legs and feet they bit and tore with their teeth and nails, like wild animals.
"Take care of the women," I exclaimed, as our fire fell among them.
"Where the men are so bad, captain, the squaws cannot be very good," replied a soldier; "but we must not shoot them I suppose, at all events."