With their naked feet and their cat-like tread, the negroes marched along far more silently than white men could ever have done, toward the faint lights that gleamed fitfully beyond the gully. If possible, Delgado would have preferred to lead them straight to Orange Grove house, for his resentment burnt fiercest of all against the Dupuy family, and he wished at least, whatever else happened, to make sure of massacring that one single obnoxious household. But it was absolutely necessary to turn first to the trash-houses and the factory, for rumours of some impending trouble had already vaguely reached the local authorities. The two constables of the district stood there on guard, and the few faithful and trustworthy plantation hands were with them there, in spite of Mr Dupuy’s undisguised ridicule, half expecting an insurgent attack that very evening. It would never do to leave the enemy thus in the rear, ready either to attack them from behind, or to bear down the news and seek for aid at Port-of-Spain. Delgado’s plan was therefore to carry each plantation entire as he went, without allowing time to the well-affected negroes to give the alarm to the whites in the next one. But he feared greatly the perils and temptations of the factory for his unruly army. ‘Whatebber else you do, me fren’s,’ the old African muttered more than once, turning round beseechingly to his ragged black followers, ‘doan’t drink de new rum, an’ doan’t set fire to de buckra trash-houses.’
At the foot of the little knoll under whose base the trash-houses lay, they came suddenly upon one of the faithful field-hands, Napoleon Floreal, whose fidelity Delgado had already in vain attempted with his rude persuasions. The negroes singled him out at once for their first vengeance. Before the man could raise so much as a sharp shout, Isaac Pourtalès had seized him from behind and gagged his mouth with a loose bandana. Two of the other men, quick as lightning, snatched his arms, and held them bent back in a very painful attitude behind his shoulders. ‘If you is wit us,’ Delgado said, in a hoarse whisper, ‘lift your right foot, fellah.’ Floreal kept both feet pressed doggedly down with negro courage upon the ground. ‘Him is traitor, traitor!’ Pourtalès muttered, between his clenched teeth. ‘Him hab black skin, but white heart. Kill him, kill him!’
In a second, a dozen angry negroes had darted forward, with their savage cutlasses brandished aloft in the air, ready to hack their offending fellow-countryman into a thousand pieces. But Delgado, his black hands held up with a warning air before them, thundered out in a tone of bitter indignation: ‘Doan’t kill him!—doan’t kill him! My children, kill in good order. Dar is plenty buckra for you to kill, witout want to kill your own brudder. Tie de han’kercher around him mout’, bind rope around him arm an’ leg, an’ trow him down de gully yonder among de cactus jungle!’
As he spoke, one of the men produced a piece of stout rope from his pocket, brought for the very purpose of tying the ‘prisoners,’ and proceeded to wind it tightly around Floreal’s body. They fastened it well round arms and legs; stuffed the bandana firmly in his mouth so as to check all his futile attempts at shouting, and rolled him over the slight bank of earth, down among the thick scrub of prickly cactus. Then, as the blood spurted out of the small wounds made by the sharp thorns, they gave a sudden low yell, and burst in a body upon the guardians of the trash-houses.
Before the two black policemen had time to know what was actually happening, they found themselves similarly gagged and bound, and tossed down beside Napoleon Floreal on the prickly cactus bed. In a minute, the insurgents had surrounded the trash-houses, cut down and captured the few faithful negroes, and marched them along unwillingly in their own body, as hostages for the better behaviour of the Orange Grove house-servants.
‘Now, me fren’s,’ Delgado shouted, with fierce energy, ‘down wit de Dupuys! We gwine to humble de proud white man! We must hab blood! De Lard is wit us! He hat’ put down de mighty from deir seats, an’ hat’ exalted de lowly an’ meek!’
But as he spoke, one or two of the heaviest-looking among the rioters began to cast their longing eyes upon the unbroached hogsheads. ‘De rum, de rum!’ one of them cried hoarsely. ‘We want suffin for keep our courage up. Little drop o’ rum help naygur man well to humble de buckra.’
Delgado rushed forward and placed himself resolutely, pistol in hand, before the seductive hogsheads. ‘Whoebber drink a drop ob dat rum dis blessed ebenin’,’ he hissed out angrily, ‘before all de Dupuys is lyin’ cold in deir own houses, I shoot him dead here wit dis very pistol!’
But the foremost rioters only laughed louder than before, and one of them even wrenched the pistol suddenly from his leader’s grasp with an unexpected side movement. ‘Look hyar, Mistah Delgado,’ the man said quietly; ‘dis risin’ is all our risin’, an’ we has got to hab voice ourselbes in de partickler way we gwine to manage him. We doan’t gwine away witout de rum, an’ we gwine to break just one little pickanie hogshead.’ At the word, he raised his cutlass above his head, and lunging forward with it like a sword, with all his force, stove in one of the thick cross-pieces at the top of the barrel, and let the liquor dribble out slowly from the chink in a small but continuous trickling stream. Next moment, a dozen black hands were held down to the silent rill like little cups, and a dozen dusky mouths were drinking down the hot new rum, neat and unalloyed, with fierce grimaces of the highest gusto. ‘Ha, dat good!’ ran round the chorus in thirsty approbation: ‘dat warm de naygur’s heart. Us gwine now to kill de buckra in true earnes’.’
Delgado stood by, mad with rage and disappointment, as he saw his followers, one after another, scrambling for handful after handful of the fiery liquor, and watched some of them, the women especially, reeling about foolishly almost at once from the poisonous fumes of the unrefined spirit. He felt in his heart that his chances were slipping rapidly from him, even before the insurrection was well begun, and that it would be impossible for a crowd of half-drunken negroes to preserve the order and discipline which alone would enable them to cope with the all-puissant and regularly drilled white men. But the more he stormed and swore and raved at them, the more did the greedy and uncontrolled negroes, now revelling in the unstinted supply, hold their hands to the undiminished stream, and drink it off by palmfuls with still deeper grunts and groans of internal satisfaction. ‘If it doan’t no hope ob conquer de island,’ the African muttered at last with a wild Guinea oath to Isaac Pourtalès, ‘at anyrate we has time to kill de Dupuys—an’ dat always some satisfaction.’