There seemed as many as a hundred negroes. They swarmed about the imperilled point; they went to it in two converging lines. Each man was bent under a load of something. He swung it from his shoulder, straightened himself, and hurried, right or left, back to shadowy heaps from which he lifted another load. “Dey sho’ gwine need de sand bags dishyer night!” said ’Rasmus.
In the leaping and hovering light the negroes looked gigantic. Coal black, bending, lifting, rushing forward, set about with night and the snarl of the tiger, they had the seeming of genii from an Eastern tale. Their voices came chantingly, or, after a silence, in a sudden shout. Their shadows moved with them on the ground. Edward glanced around for the directing white man. “Dar ain’t none,” said ’Rasmus. “De haid oberseer when he heah dat New Orleans been taken he up en’ say dey need mo’ soldiers than dey do oberseers, en’ he went ter Baton Rouge! En’ de second oberseer dat come up en’ tek he place, en’ is er good man, las’ week he broke he hip. En’ dar wuz two-three others er-driftin’ erroun, doin’ what dey wuz tol’ ter do, en’ dey gone too. When hit wants ter, de river kin pull ’em in en’ drown ’em en’ tek ’em erway, but dishyer war’s de wust yet! Yaas, sah, dishyer war’s er master han’ at eatin’ men! No, sah, dar ain’t no white man, but dar’s a white woman—”
Then Edward looked and saw Désirée Gaillard. She was standing high, beneath her heaped logs, behind her the night. She had clasped around her throat a soldier’s cloak. The wind raised it, blew it outward, the crimson lining gleaming in the torchlight. All the red light beat upon her, upon the blowing hair, upon the deep eyes and parted lips, the outstretched arm and pointing hand, the dress of some bronze and clinging stuff, the bent knee, the foot resting upon a log end higher than its fellows. The out-flung and lifted cloak had the seeming of the floating drapery in some great canvas, billowing mantle of heroine, saint, or genius.
“Saintly,” however, was certainly not the word, and Désirée would not have called herself heroine or genius. She was simply fearless and intent, and since, to keep the negroes in courage and energy, it was needful to keep them in good spirits, she was, also, to-night, cheerful, humorous, abounding in praise. Her voice rang out, deep and sweet. “Good man, Mingo! Mingo’s carrying two to everybody else’s one! Lawrence is doing well, though! So is Hannah’s Tom!—
‘Levee! levee! lock your hands hard!
Levee, levee! keep the river from my home!—’
Par ici, François! Christopher, Harper, Sambo, Haiti, Mingo Second, make a line! Big Corinth, throw them the sacks! Work hard—work hard! You shall have rest to-morrow, and at night a feast! Look at Mingo, how he works! He isn’t going to let the river cover Cape Jessamine! When the Colonel comes home he is going to say, ‘Good boy, Mingo!’ To-morrow night all the banjos playing, and good things to eat, and the house-servants down at the quarters, and a dance like Christmas!—Mingo, Mingo, put ten sacks just there—”
When she saw the soldier beside her her eyes opened wide in a moment’s query, after which she accepted him as an item of the storm and the night. All the land was in storm, and the stream of events rapid. From every quarter and from distant forests the wind blew the leaves. Sometimes one knew the tree from which they came, sometimes not. On presumption, though, if the leaf were grey, the tree was a proper tree, humble, perhaps, in its region and clime, but sound at heart and of a right grain. When Private Edward Cary, gaunt, ragged, muddy, unshaven, asked what he could do, she considered him gravely, then gave him Mingo Second and thirty men, with whom he set to strengthening a place of danger not so imminent. From where he worked he heard at intervals her clear voice, now insouciante, now thrilling. There came a moment of leisure. He turned and saw her where she stood, her knee bent, her hand and arm outstretched against the river, the horseman’s cloak blown backward and upward into a canopy, the red light over all, strong and clear upon her face and throat and bronze-sheathed body—saw her and loved her.
The December night, already well advanced, grew old. Always the river attacked, always the land opposed. The yellow current sucked and dragged, but the dyke held and the dyke grew stronger. The rain ceased; far up in the sky, through a small, small rift peered a star. The wind died into a whisper. By three o’clock there came a feeling that the crisis had passed. ’Rasmus, working well with Edward’s detachment, gave it voice. “Cape Jessamine’s done stood heah sence de flood, en’ I specs dat’s two hundred yeahs! Yaas, Lawd! En’ when Gabriel blow he trump, Cape Jessamine gwine up en’ say, ‘Heah I is, sah!’”
And at that moment there came running through the fields a wild-eyed negro, panic in his outstretched hands. “De levee by de backwoods—de levee by de backwoods—de levee what nobody eber thinks ob, hit’s so safe! De ribber done swing ergin hit—de ribber done gouge er hole big ez de debbil! De yerth’s er-tumblin’ in, en’ de ribber’s comin’ out—”