At the sound of that mighty spell, a powerful one, indeed, to the fierce, old, half-christianised Mohammedan, Delgado’s arm dropped powerless to his trembling side, and he fell back, gnashing his teeth like a bulldog balked of a fight, into the general mass of plantation negroes. There he stood, dazed and stunned apparently, leaning up sulkily against the piazza post, but speaking not a word to either party for good or for evil.
The lull was but for a minute; and Edward Hawthorn saw at once that if he was to gain any permanent advantage by the momentary change of feeling in the fickle negro mob, he must keep their attention distracted for a while, till their savage passions had time to cool a little, and the effect of this unwonted orgy of fire and bloodshed had passed away before the influence of sober reflection. A negro crowd is like a single creature of impulse—swayed to and fro a hundred times more easily than even a European mob by every momentary passing wave of anger or of feeling.
‘Take up Mr Noel and Miss Dupuy,’ he said aside in his cool commanding tone to the Orange Grove servants:—‘Mr Noel isn’t dead—I see him breathing yet—and lay them on a bed and look after them, while I speak to these angry people.’ Then he turned, mastering himself with an effort for that terrible crisis, and taking a chair from the piazza, he mounted it quickly, and began to speak in a loud voice, unbroken by a single tremor of fear, like one addressing a public meeting, to the great sea of wondering, upturned black faces, lighted up from behind in lurid gleams by the red glare of the still blazing cane-houses.
‘My friends,’ he said, holding his hand before him, palm outward, in a mute appeal for silence and a fair hearing, ‘listen to me for a moment. I want to speak to you; I want to help you to what you yourselves are blindly seeking. I am here to-night as Queen Victoria’s delegate and representative. Queen Victoria has your welfare and interest at heart; and she has sent me out to this island to do equal justice between black man and white man, and to see that no one oppresses another by force or fraud, by lawlessness or cunning. As you all know, I am in part a man of your own blood; and Queen Victoria, in sending me out to judge between you, and in appointing so many of your own race to posts of honour here in Trinidad, has shown her wish to favour no one particular class or colour to the detriment or humiliation of the others. But in doing as I see you have done to-night—in burning down factories, in attacking houses, in killing or trying to kill your own employers, and helpless women, and men who have done no crime against you except trying to protect your victims from your cruel vengeance—in doing this, my friends, you have not done wisely. That is not the way to get what you want from Queen Victoria.—What is it you want? Tell me that. That is the first thing. If it is anything reasonable, the Queen will grant it. What do you want from Queen Victoria?’
With one voice the whole crowd of lurid upturned black faces answered loudly and earnestly: ‘Justice, justice!’
Edward paused a moment, with rhetorical skill, and looked down at the mob of shouting lips with a face half of sternness and half of benevolence. ‘My friends,’ he said again, ‘you shall have justice. You haven’t always had it in the past—that I know and regret; but you shall have it, trust me, henceforth in the future. Listen to me. I know you have often suffered injustice. Your rights have not been always respected, and your feelings have many times been ruthlessly trampled upon. Nobody sympathises with you more fully than I do. But just because I sympathise with you so greatly, I feel it my duty to warn you most earnestly against acting any longer as you have been acting this evening. I am your friend—you know I am your friend. From me, I trust, you have never had anything less than equal justice.’
‘Dat’s true—dat’s true!’ rang in a murmuring wave of assent from the eager listening crowd of negroes.
‘Well,’ Edward went on, lowering his tone to more persuasive accents, ‘be advised by me, then, and if you want to get what you ask from Queen Victoria, do as I tell you. Disperse to-night quietly and separately. Don’t go off in a body together and talk with one another excitedly around your watch-fires about your wrongs and your grievances. Burn no more factories and cane-houses. Attack no more helpless men and innocent women. Think no more of your rights for the present. But go each man to his own hut, and wait to see what Queen Victoria will do for you.—If you continue foolishly to burn and riot, shall I tell you in plain words what will happen to you? The governor will be obliged to bring out the soldiers and the volunteers against you; they will call upon you, as I call upon you now, in the Queen’s name, to lay down your pistols and your guns and your cutlasses; and if you don’t lay them down at once, they will fire upon you, and disperse you easily. Don’t be deceived. Don’t believe that because you are more numerous—because there are so many more of you than of the white men—you could conquer them and kill them by main force, if it ever came to open fighting. The soldiers, with their regular drill and their good arms and their constant training, could shoot you all down with the greatest ease, in spite of your numbers and your pistols and your cutlasses. I don’t say this to frighten you or to threaten you; I say it as your friend, because I don’t want you foolishly to expose yourselves to such a terrible butchery and slaughter.’
A murmur went through the crowd once more, and they looked dubiously and inquiringly toward Louis Delgado. But the African gave no sign and made no answer; he merely stood sullenly still by the post against which he was leaning; so Edward hastened to reassure the undecided mob of listening negroes by turning quickly to the other side of the moot question.
‘Now, listen again,’ he said, ‘for what I’m going to say to you now is very important. If you will disperse, and go each to his own home, without any further trouble or riot, I will undertake, myself, to go to England on purpose for you, and tell Queen Victoria herself about all your troubles. I will tell her that you haven’t always been justly treated, and I’ll try to get new and better laws made in future for you, under which you may secure more justice than you sometimes get under present arrangements. Do you understand me? If you go home at once, I promise to go across the sea and speak to Queen Victoria herself on your behalf, over in England.’