An expression of concentrated rage passed over Biassou’s face.
“Well,” continued the carpenter, “you appear ashamed of having worked for me; ought not Jean Biassou to feel proud of having belonged to Jacques Belin? Your mother, the old idiot, has often swept out my shop, but at last I sold her to the major-domo of the Hospital of the Fathers, and she was so old and decrepit, that he would only give me thirty-two livres and six sous for her. There is my history and yours, but it seems as if the negroes and the mulattoes are growing proud, and that you have forgotten the time when you served Master Jacques Belin, the carpenter of Cap, on your knees.”
Biassou listened to him with that sardonic smile that gave him the appearance of a tiger.
“Good,” said he; then turning to the negroes who had captured Belin, “get two trestles, two planks, and a saw, and take this man away. Jacques Belin, carpenter of Cap, thank me, for you shall have a true carpenter’s death.”
His sardonic laugh too fully explained the horrible punishment that he destined for the pride of his former master, but Jacques Belin did not blench, and turning proudly to Biassou, cried—
“Yes, I ought to thank you, for I bought you for thirty piastres, and I got work out of you to a much greater amount.”
They dragged him away.
CHAPTER XXX.
More dead than alive, the other two prisoners had witnessed this frightful prologue to their own chance. Their timid and terrified appearance contrasted with the courageous audacity of the carpenter; every limb quivered with affright.
Biassou looked at them one after the other with his fox-like glance, and, as if he took a pleasure in prolonging their agony, began a discussion with Rigaud upon the different kinds of tobacco, asserting that that of Havana was only good for manufacturing cigars, whilst for snuff he knew nothing better than the Spanish tobacco, two barrels of which Bouchmaun had sent him, being a portion of the plunder of M. Lebattre’s stores in the island of Tortue. Then, turning sharply upon the Citizen General C——, he asked him—