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—
“What do you think?”
This sudden address utterly confounded the timid citizen, and he
stammered out.
“General, I am entirely of your Excellency’s opinion.”
“You flatter me,” replied Biassou; “I want _your_ opinion, not mine. Do
you know any tobacco that makes better snuff than that of M. Lebattres?”
“No, my lord,” answered C——, whose evident terror greatly amused
Biassou.
“_General, Your Excellency, My Lord!_ you are an aristocrat.”
“Oh no, certainly not,” exclaimed the citizen general. “I am a good
patriot of ’91, and an ardent _negrophile_.”
“Negrophile!” interrupted the general. “Pray what is a negrophile?”
“It is a friend of the blacks,” stammered the citizen.
“It is not enough to be a friend of the blacks; you must also be a
friend of the men of colour.”
“Men of colour is what I should have said,” replied the lover of the
blacks, humbly. “I am mixed up with all the most famous partisans of the
negroes and the mulattoes——”
Delighted at the opportunity of humiliating a white man, Biassou again
interrupted him:
“_Negroes and mulattoes!_ What do you mean, pray? Do you wish to insult
me by making use of those terms of contempt invented by the whites?
There are only men of colour and blacks here—do you understand that,
Mr. Planter?”
“It was a slip, a bad habit that I picked up in childhood,” answered
C——. “Pardon me, my lord, I had no wish to offend you.”
“Leave off this _my lording_ business; I have already told you that I
don’t like these aristocratic ways.”
C—— again endeavoured to excuse himself, and began to stammer out a
fresh explanation.
“If you knew, citizen——”
“Citizen indeed!” cried Biassou, in affected anger, “I detest all this
Jacobin jargon. Are you by chance a Jacobin? Remember that you are
speaking to the generalissimo of the king’s troops.”
The unhappy partisan of the negro race was dumbfounded, and did not know
in what terms to address this man who equally disdained the titles of
“my lord” or “citizen,” and the aristocratic or republican modes of
salutation. Biassou, whose anger was only assumed, cruelly enjoyed the
predicament in which he had placed him. “Alas,” at last said the citizen
general, “you do not do me justice, noble defender of the unwritten
rights of the larger portion of the human race.”
In his perplexity to hit upon an acceptable mode of address to a man who
appeared to disdain all titles, he had recourse to one of those sonorous
periphrases which the republicans occasionally substituted for the name
and title of the persons with whom they were in conversation.
Biassou looked at him steadily and said, “You love the blacks and the
men of colour?”
“Do I love them?” exclaimed the citizen C——. “Why, I correspond with
Brissot and——”
Biassou interrupted him with a sardonic laugh. “Ha, ha, I am glad to
find in you so trusty a friend to our cause; you must, of course,
thoroughly detest those wretched colonists who punished our insurrection
by a series of the most cruel executions, and you, of course, think with
us, that it is not the blacks, but the whites, who are the true rebels,
since they are in arms against the laws of nature and humanity? You must
execrate such monsters!”
“I do execrate them,” answered C——.
“Well,” continued Biassou, “what do you think of a man who, in his
endeavours to crush the last efforts of the slaves to regain their
liberty, placed the heads of fifty black men on each side of the avenue
that led to his house?”
C—— grew fearfully pale.
“What do you think of a white man who would propose to surround the town
of Cap with a circle of negro heads?”
“Mercy, mercy!” cried the terrified citizen general.
“Am I threatening you?” replied Biassou, coldly. “Let me finish; a
circle of heads that would reach from Fort Picolet to Cape Caracol. What
do you think of that? Answer me.”
The words of Biassou, “Do I threaten you,” had given a faint ray of hope
to C——, for he fancied that the general might have heard of this
terrible proposition without knowing the author of it; he therefore
replied with all the firmness that he could muster, in order to remove
any impression that the idea was his own: “I consider such a suggestion
an atrocious crime.”
Biassou chuckled.
“Good, and what punishment should be inflicted on the man who proposed
it?”
The unfortunate C—— hesitated.
“What!” cried Biassou, “you hesitate! Are you, or are you not, the
friend of the blacks?”
Of the two alternatives the wretched man chose the least threatening
one, and seeing no hostile light in Biassou’s eyes, he answered in a low
voice—
“The guilty person deserves death.”
“Well answered,” replied Biassou, calmly, throwing aside the tobacco
that he had been chewing.
His assumed air of indifference had completely deceived the unfortunate
lover of the negro race, and he made another effort to dissipate any
suspicions which might have been engendered against him.
“No one,” cried he, “has a more ardent desire for your success than I. I
correspond with Brissot and Pruneau de Pomme-Gouge in France, with Magaw
in America, with Peter Paulus in Holland, with the Abbé Tamburini in
Italy.” And he was continuing to unfold the same string of names which
he had formerly repeated, but with a different motive, at the council
held at M. de Blanchelande’s, when Biassou interrupted him.
“What do I care with whom you correspond! Tell me rather where are your
granaries and store-houses, for my army has need of supplies; your
plantation is doubtless a rich one, and your business must be lucrative
since you correspond with so many merchants.”
C—— ventured timidly to remark—
“Hero of humanity, they are not merchants, but philosophers,
philanthropists, lovers of the race of blacks.”
“Then,” said Biassou, with a shake of his head, “if you have nothing
that can be plundered, what good are you?”
This question afforded a chance of safety of which C—— eagerly availed
himself.
“Illustrious warrior,” exclaimed he, “have you an economist in your
army?”
“What is that?” asked the general.
“It is,” replied the prisoner, with as much calmness as his fears would
permit him to assume, “a most necessary man, one whom all appreciate,
one who follows out and classes in their proper order the respective
material resources of an empire, and gives to each its real value,
increasing and improving them by combining their sources and results,
and pouring them like fertilizing streams into the main river of general
utility, which in its turn swells the great sea of public prosperity.”
“_Caramba_,” observed Biassou, leaning over towards the Obi. “What the
deuce does he mean by all these words strung together like the beads on
your rosary?”
The Obi shrugged his shoulders in sign of ignorance and disdain as
citizen C—— continued—
“If you will permit me to observe, valiant chief of the regenerators of
Saint Domingo, I have carefully studied the works of the greatest
economists of the world—Turgot, Raynal, and Mirabeau the friend of man.
I have put their theories into practice, I thoroughly understand the
science indispensable for the government of kingdoms and states——”
“The economist is not economical of his words,” observed Rigaud, with
his bland and cunning smile.
“But you, eternal talker,” cried Biassou, “tell me, have I any kingdoms
or states to govern?”
“Not yet perhaps, great man, but they will come; and besides, my
knowledge descends to all the useful details which are comprised in the
interior economy of an army.”
The general again interrupted him: “I have nothing to do with the
interior economy of the army, I command it.”
“Good,” replied the citizen; “you shall be the commander, I will be the
commissary; I have much special knowledge as to the increase of
cattle——”
“Do you think we are going to breed cattle?” cried Biassou, with his
sardonic laugh. “No, my good fellow, we are content with eating them;
when cattle become scarce in the French colony I shall cross the line of
mountains on the frontier and take the Spanish sheep and oxen from the
plains of Cotury, of La Vega, of St. Jago, and from the banks of the
Yuna; if necessary I will go as far as the Island of Jamaica, and to the
back of the mountain of Cibos, and from the mouths of the Neybe to those
of Santo Domingo; besides, I should be glad to punish those infernal
Spanish planters for giving up Ogé to the French. You see I am not
uneasy as regards provisions, and so have no need of _your knowledge_.”
This open declaration rather disconcerted the poor economist; he made,
however, one more effort for safety. “My studies,” said he, “have not
been limited to the reproduction of cattle, I am acquainted with other
special branches of knowledge that may be very useful to you; I can show
you the method of manufacturing pitch and working coal mines.”
“What do I care for that!” exclaimed Biassou. “When I want charcoal I
burn a few leagues of forest.”
“I can tell you the proper kinds of wood to use for shipbuilding—the
_chicarm_ and the _sabicca_ for the keels, the _yabas_ for the knees,
the medlars for the framework, the _hacotnas_, the _gaïacs_, the cedars,
the acomas——”
“_Que te lleven todos los demonios de los diez-y-siete infernos!_” (“May
the devils of the thirty-seven hells fly away with you!”), cried
Biassou, boiling over with impatience.
“I beg your pardon, my gracious patron,” said the trembling economist,
who did not understand Spanish.
“Listen,” said Biassou, “I don’t want to build vessels; there is only
one vacancy that I can offer you, and that is not a very important one;
I want a man to wait upon me; and now, Mr. Philosopher, tell me if that
will suit you; you will have to serve me on your bended knees, you will
prepare my pipe, cook my _calalou_ and turtle soup, and you will stand
behind me with a fan of peacock or parrot feathers like those two pages;
now will the situation suit you?”
Citizen C——, whose only desire was to save his life, bent to the earth
with a thousand expressions of joy and gratitude.
“You accept my offer, then?” asked Biassou.
“Can you ask such a question, generous master? do you think that I
should hesitate for a moment in accepting so distinguished a post as
that of being in constant attendance on you?”
At this reply the diabolical sneer of Biassou became more pronounced. He
rose up with an air of triumph, crossed his arms on his chest, and
thrusting aside with his foot the white man’s head who was prostrate on
the ground before him, he cried in a loud voice—
“I am delighted at being able to fathom how far the cowardice of the
white man could go, I have already measured the extent of his cruelty.
Citizen C——, it is to you that I owe this double experience. I knew
all; how could you have been sufficiently besotted to think that I did
not? It was you who presided at the executions of June, July, and
August; it was you who placed fifty negro heads on each side of your
avenue; it was you who proposed to slaughter the five hundred negroes
who were confined in irons after the revolt, and to encircle the town of
Cap with their heads from Fort Picolet to Cape Caracol. If you could
have done it you would have placed my head amongst them, and now you
think yourself lucky if I will take you as my body-servant. No, no! I
have more regard for your honour than you yourself have, and I will not
inflict this affront on you; prepare to die!”
At a gesture of his hand the negroes removed the unhappy lover of the
blacks to a position near me, where overwhelmed by the honour of his
position, he fell to the ground without being able to articulate a word.