The Hour and the Man Part 60

"Yes, it is a dumb march," said Dessalines, "at present. They will strike up when they have turned the shoulder of that hill, no doubt.

There! now listen!"

All listened, so that the brook, half a mile behind, made its babbling heard, but there was not a breath of music.

"Is it possible that Rochambeau should be in the way," asked Therese.

"He cannot be in the way," said her husband, "for where I stand, I command every foot of the road, up to our posts; but he may be nearer than we thought. I conclude that he is."

"Look! See!" cried several. "They are taking another road. Where are they going! General Dessalines, what does it mean?"

"I would thank anyone to tell me that it is not as I fear," replied Dessalines. "I fear Maurepas is effecting a junction, not with us, but with some one else."

"With Rochambeau!"

"Traitor!"

"The traitor Maurepas!"

"His head!"

"Our all for his head!" cried the enraged gazers, as they saw Maurepas indeed diverging from the road to the post, and a large body of French troops turning a reach of the same road, from behind a hill. The two clouds of dust met. And now there was no more silence, but sound enough from below and afar. There was evidently clamour and rage among the troops in the Plateaux; and bursts of music from the army of their foes, triumphant and insulting, swelled the breeze.

"Our all for the head of Maurepas!" cried the group again.

"Nay," said Vincent, "leave Maurepas his head. Who knows but that peace may come out of it? If all had done as he has now done, there could be no war."

"In the same way," exclaimed Pascal, "as if all of your colour thought as you do, there would then be no war, because there would be no men to fight; but only slaves to walk quietly under the yoke."

"Be as angry as you will," said Vincent, in a low voice to Pascal. "No one's anger can alter the truth. It is impious and vain, here as elsewhere, to oppose Bonaparte. L'Ouverture will have to yield; you know that as well as I do, Monsieur Pascal; and those are the best friends of the blacks who help to render war impossible, and who bring the affair to a close while the First Consul may yet be placable."

"Has that opinion of yours been offered to your Commander, Vincent?"

"It would have been, if he had asked for it. He probably knows that I had rather have seen him high in honour and function under Leclerc, than an outlaw, entrenched in the mornes."

"Then why are you here?"

"I am here to protect those who cannot protect themselves, in these rough times. I am here to guard these ladies against all foes, come they whence they may,--from France, or out of our own savannahs,--from earth, air, or sea.--But hark! Silence, ladies! Silence all, for a moment!"

They listened, ready to take alarm from him, they knew not why. Nothing was heard but the distant baying of hounds,--the hunters coming home as it was supposed.

"Those are not Saint Domingo hounds," said Vincent, in a low voice to Dessalines.

"No, indeed!--Home, all of you! Run for your lives! No questions, but run! Therese, leave me! I command you.--If this is your doing, Vincent--"

"Upon my soul, it is not. I know nothing about it.--Home, ladies, as fast as possible!"

"My children!" exclaimed Madame Bellair. "I can find them, if you will only tell me the danger,--what is the danger?"

"You hear those hounds. They are Cuba bloodhounds," said Dessalines.

"The fear is that they are leading an enemy over the hills."

Not a word more was necessary. Every one fled who could, except Therese, who would not go faster than her husband's strength permitted him to proceed. The voice of the hounds, and the tramp of horses' feet were apparently so near, before they could reach the first sentry, that both were glad to see Pascal hurrying towards them, with two soldiers, who carried Dessalines to the house, while Pascal and Therese ran for their lives,--she striving to thank her companion for remembering to bring this aid.

"No thanks!" said Pascal. "General Dessalines is our great man now. We cannot do without him. Here is to be a siege,--a French troop has come over by some unsuspected pa.s.s;--I do not understand it."

"Have you sent to the Plateaux?"

"Of course, instantly; but our messengers will probably be intercepted, though we have spared three men, to try three different paths. If L'Ouverture learns our condition, it will be by the firing."

Some of the sportsmen had brought in from the hills the news of the presence of an enemy in the morne--not, apparently, on their way to the plantation, but engaged in some search among the hills. Others spoke tidings which would not have been told for hours but for the determination of Madame Bellair to set out in search of her children, whatever foe might be in the path. It became necessary to relate that it was too late to save her children. They had been seen lying in a track of the wood, torn in pieces by the bloodhounds, whose cry was heard now close at hand. Though there was no one who would at first undertake to tell the mother this, there were none who, in the end, could conceal it from her. They need not have feared that their work of defence would be impeded by her waitings and tears. There was not a cry; there was not a tear. Those who dared to look in her face saw that the fires of vengeance were consuming all that was womanish in Deesha's nature. She was the soldier to whom, under Dessalines, the successful defence of Le Zephyr was mainly owing. Dessalines gave the orders, and superintended the arrangements, which she, with a frantic courage, executed. From that hour to the day when she and her husband expired in tortures, the forces of the First Consul had no more vindictive and mischievous enemy than the wife of Charles Bellair. Never propitiated, and long unsubdued, Charles Bellair and his wife lived henceforth in the fastnesses of the interior; and never for a day desisted from hara.s.sing the foe, and laying low every Frenchman on whom a sleepless, and apparently ubiquitous vengeance, could fix its grasp.

Deesha was not the only woman who seemed to bear a foeman's soul.

Therese looked as few had seen her look before; and, busy as was her husband with his arrangements for the defence of the house, he could not but smile in the face which expressed so much. To her, and any companions she could find among the women, was confided the charge of Sabes and Martin, who, locked into a room whence they must hear the firing of their comrades outside, could not be supposed likely to make a desperate attempt to escape. Therese answered for their detention, if she had arms for herself and two companions. Whoever these heroines might be, the prisoners were found safe, after the French had decamped.

There were doubts which, at any other time, would have needed deliberation. It was a doubt, for a moment, whether to imprison Vincent, whose good faith was now extremely questionable: but there was no one to guard him; and his surprise and concern were evidently so real, and his activity was so great in preparing for defence, that there seemed nothing for it but trusting him to protect the women who were under his charge. Dessalines, however, kept his eye upon him, and his piece in readiness to shoot him down, on the first evidence of treachery.

Another doubt was as to the foe they had to contend against. How they got into the morne, and why such an approach was made to an object so important as securing a party of hostages like these; whether, if Vincent had nothing to do with it, the spies had; and whether, therefore, more attacks might not be looked for, were questions which pa.s.sed through many minds, but to which no consideration could now be given. Here were the foe; and they must be kept off.

The struggle was short and sharp. Small as was the force without, it far outnumbered that of the fighting men in what had been supposed the secure retreat of Le Zephyr; and there is no saying but that the ladies might have found themselves at length on Tortuga, and in the presence of Bonaparte's sister, if the firing had not reached the watchful ear of L'Ouverture at the Plateaux, on the way to which all the three messengers had been captured. Toussaint arrived with a troop, in time to deliver his household. After his first onset, the enemy retreated; at first carrying away some prisoners, but dropping them on their road, one after another, as they were more and more hardly pressed by L'Ouverture, till the few survivors were glad to escape as they could, by the way they came.

Toussaint returned, his soldiers bringing in the mangled bodies of the two boys. When he inquired what loss had been sustained, he found that three, besides the children, were killed; and that Vincent was the only prisoner, besides the three messengers turned back in the morne.

"Never was there a more willing prisoner, in my opinion," observed Pascal.

"He carries away a mark from us, thank Heaven!" said Dessalines.

"Madame Bellair shot him."

It was so. Deesha saw Vincent join the French, and go off with them, on the arrival of L'Ouverture; and, partly through revenge, but not without a thought of the disclosures it was in his power to make, she strove to silence him for ever. She only reached a limb, however, and sent him away, as Dessalines said, bearing a mark from Le Zephyr.

One of the French troop, made prisoner, was as communicative as could have been desired--as much so as Vincent would probably be on the other side. He declared that the attack on Le Zephyr was a mere accident: that his company had entered the morne, led by the bloodhounds in pursuit of some negroes, from whom they wanted certain information for Rochambeau, respecting the localities; that they had thus become acquainted with the almost impracticable pa.s.s by which they had entered; that, when the hounds had destroyed the children, and proved that there were inhabitants in the morne, the situation of Le Zephyr had been discovered, and afterwards the rank of its inhabitants; that the temptation of carrying off these hostages to Rochambeau had been too strong to be resisted; and hence the attack.

"We shall have to remove," the ladies said to each other, "now that our retreat is known."

"Shall we have to remove?" asked Euphrosyne, whose love of the place could not be quenched, even by the blood upon its threshold. "I am not afraid to stay, if any one else will."

"How can you be so rash, Euphrosyne?" asked Afra.

"I would not be rash, Euphrosyne replied; but we know now how these people came into the morne, and L'Ouverture will guard the pa.s.s. And remember, Afra, we have beaten them; and they will take care how they attack us another time. Remember, we have beaten them."

"We have beaten them," said Dessalines, laughing. "And what did you do to beat off the French, my little lady?"

"I watched the prisoners through the keyhole; and if they had made the least attempt to set the house on fire--"

"You would have put it out with your tears--hey, Mademoiselle Euphrosyne?"

"Ask Madame, your lady, what she would have done in such a case: she stood beside me. But does L'Ouverture say we must remove?"

"L'Ouverture thinks," said Toussaint, who heard her question, "that this is still the safest place for the brave women who keep up his heart by their cheerful faces. He is ashamed that they have been negligently guarded. It shall not happen again."