“My faithful negro, however,” continued the colonel, pausing at this point to puff out another cloud of smoke from his fragrant cigar,—“well, he was unable to learn anything of the Haytians, though he tried to make friends of them, for they always stopped their talk amongst themselves on his approach, and would only reply to his overtures in monosyllables expressive of distrust, accompanied by contemptuous gestures that angered poor Cato greatly, for as he considered that he belonged to me he felt the insult to be directed not only at himself but at the whole family.
“‘Golly, massa!’ he said to me after a couple or so of attempts that proved fruitless to ingratiate himself into the confidence of the gang, ‘you just wait; I catch dem black raskils nappin’ by-an’-bye, you see, massa. You see, “speshly dat tarn markiss!”’
“He managed this sooner than he thought, and pretty smartly too, for the very next day he caught the noble scoundrel, who was his particular aversion, walking off with a pair of pistols from Captain Alphonse’s cabin. On Cato coming up and stopping him in the very act, the ‘marquis’ put down the pistols quickly, saying in his off-hand manner that he was merely examining the locks, remarking how well they were made. ‘But,’ said Cato, ‘guess he no bamboozle dis chile!’
“The following day, sirs, was the seventh of November, last Friday, that awful, that terrible day!
“Cato, who had been away forward early in the morning to see about our breakfast, came back aft with a terrified face.
“‘Yay, massa,’ said he, ‘guess dose tam niggars up to sumfin’! I’se hear um say dey smell de lan’ an’ de time was ’rive to settle de white trash, dat what dey say, an’ take ship. One ob de tam raskel see me come out of gully, an’ say cut um tongue out if I’se tell youse, massa!’
“Of course on hearing this I put Captain Alphonse immediately on his guard, and we locked up all the spare arms and ammunition until we should require the same, excepting our own revolvers and three other pistols, which we served out to the two mates and the boatswain, all of whom were good men and brave Frenchmen. Monsieur Boisson, when he was asked if he would have one, shrugged his shoulders and said he was a simple passenger, he did not understand fighting—it was not his affair; while little Mr Johnson said he was an Englishman and preferred using his fists. Don Miguel had a pistol of his own.
“Jingo! The emergency we dreaded came soon enough, sir; indeed, sooner than we expected, and it was fortunate we had been forewarned!
“It was just after the noontide hour, I recollect that well, for Captain Alphonse had just taken the altitude of the sun to ascertain our position, when, as he came up from his cabin where he had gone to consult his chronometers and work out ‘the reckoning,’ as you sailors call it, that that black devil the ‘marquis’ mounted the poop with a simpering and fawning air.
“‘Ah well, captain,’ said he, with a very polite bow, ‘where do you make us out to be, monsieur? Near the Bermudas yet?’