WHERE BLACK MEN RULE
Stuart was not the only person on the streets of Cap Haitien the next
morning who was conscious of personal danger. Manuel Polliovo was ill at
ease. Bearing the secret that he bore, the Cuban knew that a hint of it
would bring him instant death, or, if the authorities had time to
intervene, incarceration in a Haitian prison, a fate sometimes worse
than death. Even the dreaded presence of U. S. Marines would not hold
the negro barbarians back, if they knew.
Manuel was by no means blind to his peril. He was relieved in the
thought that the American, Garfield, was where he could not do him any
harm, but there were other dangers. Hence he was startled and jumped
nervously, on hearing a voice by his elbow.
"Do you want a guide, Senor?"
"A guide, Boy! Where to?"
The answer came clear and meaningly:
"To the Citadel of the Black Emperor!"
The Cuban grew cold, under the burning sun, and, professional
conspirator though he was, his face blenched. His hand instinctively
sought the pocket wherein lay his revolver.
Yet he dare not kill. Five years of American occupation had bred a sense
of law and order in the coast towns, at least, which had not been known
in Haiti for a century and more. Any violence would lead to inquiry, and
Manuel's record was not one which would bear investigation.
How came this ragged Haitian urchin to know? Manuel's swift glance at
Stuart had shown him nothing but a Creole lad in clothes too big for him
and a pair of boots fastened with string. The messenger meant nothing,
it was the message which held menace.
To the Cuban this apparently chance street encounter was ominous of
black threat. It revealed treachery and might mean a trap. But from
whence? Swiftly Manuel's keen brain, the brain of an arch-plotter,
scanned the manifold aspects of this sudden threat.
How much labor, how many wild adventures, what a series of dangers would
Stuart have escaped, had he but been able to read the thoughts of that
crafty brain!
Did his fellow-conspirators want to get rid of him? So Manuel's doubts
ran. Did they count on his shooting the boy, in a panic, and being
lynched for it, there and then, on the street of Cap Haitien? Or of his
being imprisoned, tried and executed for murder? Such a plot was not
unlikely.
But, if so, who had sent the boy?
Was Cesar Leborge playing him false? True, from that bull-necked,
ferocious negro general, Manuel knew he could expect nothing but
brutality, envy and hate; but such a design as this boy's intervention
seemed too subtle for the giant Creole's brain. Manuel accounted himself
master of the negro when it came to treachery and cunning. Moreover, he
knew Leborge to be a sullen and suspicious character, little likely to
talk or to trust anyone.
What did the boy know? Manuel flashed a look at him. But Stuart was idly
fiddling in the dust with the toe of his ragged boot, and the Cuban's
suspicions flashed to another quarter.
Could the Englishman, Guy Cecil, be to blame? That did not seem any more
likely. Manuel was afraid of Cecil, though he would not admit it, even
to himself. The Englishman's chill restraint, even in moments of the
most tense excitement, cowed the Cuban. Never had he been able to
penetrate into his fellow-conspirator's thoughts. But that Cecil should
have talked loosely of so vital, so terrible a secret? No. The grave
itself was not more secretive than that quiet schemer, of whom nothing
ever seemed to be known. And to a negro boy! No, a thousand times, no!
Stay--was this boy a negro boy? Suspicion changed its seat in the wily
Cuban's brain. That point, at least, he would find out, and swiftly. He
looked at his ragged questioner, still fiddling with his toe in the
dust, and answered.
"Well," he said, "you can show me what there is to be seen in this
place. But first I will go to the Café. No," he continued, as the boy
turned towards the new part of the town, built under American oversight,
"not there. To the Café de l'Opéra. Go down the street and keep a few
steps in front."
Stuart obeyed. He had seen the first swift motion of the Cuban's hand,
when he had been accosted, and had guessed that it was pistolwards. It
was uncomfortable walking in front of a man who was probably aching to
blow one's brains out. Nasty little cold shivers ran up and down
Stuart's back. But the tents of the U. S. Marines, in camp a little
distance down the beach, gave him courage. With his sublime faith in the
United States, Stuart could not believe that he could come to any harm
within sight of the Stars and Stripes floating from the flagstaff in
front of the encampment.
While Stuart was thus getting backbone from his flag, Manuel was
concentrating his wits and experience on this problem which threatened
him so closely.
Was this boy a negro?
A life spent in international trickery on a large scale had made the
Cuban a good judge of men. He knew native races. He knew--what the white
man generally ignores or forgets--that between the various black races
are mental differences as wide as between races of other color. He knew
that the Ewe negro is no more like the Riff in character, than the
phlegmatic Dutchman resembles the passionate Italian. If a black, to
what race did this boy belong? Was he a black, at all?
The bright sun threw no reflected lights on the boy's skin, the texture
of which was darker than that of a mulatto, and had a dead, opaque look,
lacking the golden glow of mulatto skin. The lad's hair showed little
hint of Bantu ancestry and his feet were small. True, all this might
betoken any of the Creole combinations common in Haiti, but the Cuban
was not satisfied. If the skin had been stained, now----
"Boy!" he called.
Stuart looked around.
"Here are some coppers for you."
The boy slouched toward him, extended his hand negligently and the Cuban
dropped some three-centime pieces into it.
Stuart mumbled some words of thanks, imitating, as far as he could, the
Haitian dialect, but, despite his desire to act the part, feeling
awkward in receiving charity.
Manuel watched him closely, then, abruptly, bade him go on ahead. The
scrutiny had increased his uneasiness.
This self-appointed guide was no negro, no mulatto, of that Manuel was
sure. The money had been received without that wide answering grin of
pleasure characteristic in almost all negro types. Moreover, the palms
of the boy's hands were the same color as the rest of his skin. The
Cuban knew well that a certain dirty pallor is always evident on the
palms of the hands of even the blackest negroes.
The boy's reference to the "Citadel of the Black Emperor" showed that he
was aware of this secret meeting of conspirators.
This was grave.
More, he was disguised.
This was graver still.
Was this boy, too, afraid of Haiti, that savage land at the doors of
America; that abode where magic, superstition and even cannibalism still
lurk in the forests; that barbarous republic where the white man is
despised and hated, and the black man dominates? That land where the
only civilizing force for a century has been a handful of American
marines!
That this boy was disguised suggested that he was in fear for his life;
but, if so, why was he there? How did he come to know the pass-word of
the conspiracy? For what mysterious reason did he offer himself as a
guide to the haunted place of meeting?
Who was this boy?
Manuel turned into the Café de l'Opéra, a tumble-down frame shack with a
corrugated iron roof, to order a cooling drink and to puzzle out this
utterly baffling mystery.
The Cuban's first impulse was to flee. Had anything less imperious than
this all-important meeting been before him, Manuel would have made his
escape without a moment's delay.
Cap Haitien is no place for a white man who has fallen under suspicion.
Of the four gateways into Haiti it is the most dangerous. In Jacamal, a
white man may be left alone, so long as he does not incur the enmity of
the blacks; in Gonaive the foreign holders of concessions may protect
him; in Port-au-Prince, the capital, he is safeguarded by the potent arm
of the American marines; but, in the country districts back of Cap
Haitien, the carrion buzzards may be the only witnesses of his fate.
And, to that back country, the Cuban must go. All this, Manuel knew, and
he was a shrewd enough man to dare to be afraid.
Stuart squatted in the shadow of the building while the Cuban sipped
from his glass. Thus, each doubting the other, and each fearing the
other, they gazed over the busy desolation of Cap Haitien, a town unlike
any other on earth.
Save for a small and recently rebuilt section in the heart of the
town--which boasted some 10,000 inhabitants--flimsy frame houses rose in
white poverty upon the ruins of what was once known as "the little Paris
of the West Indies." Of the massive buildings of a century ago, not one
remained whole. The great earthquake of 1842 did much toward their
destruction; the orgy of loot and plunder which followed, did more; but
the chiefest of all agents of demolition was the black man's rule.
The spacious residences were never rebuilt, the fallen aqueducts were
left in ruins, the boulevards fell into disrepair and guinea-grass
rioted through the cracked pavements. Back of the town the plantations
were neglected, the great houses fallen, while the present owners lived
contentedly in the little huts which once had been built for slaves. The
ruthless hands of time, weather and the jungle snatched back "Little
Paris," and Cap Haitien became a huddled cluster of pitiful buildings
scattered among the rubbish-heaps and walls of a once-beautiful
stone-built town.
This appearance of desolation, however, was contradicted by the evidence
of commercial activity. The sea-front was a whirl of noise.
The din of toil was terrific. Over the cobblestoned streets came rough
carts drawn by four mules--of the smallest race of mules in the
world--and these carts clattered down noisily with their loads of
coffee-sacks, the drivers shouting as only a Haitian negro can shout. At
the wharf, each cart was at once surrounded by a cluster of negroes,
each one striving to outshout his fellows, while the bawling of the
driver rose high above all. Lines of negroes, naked to the waist, sacks
on their glistening backs, poured out from the warehouses like ants from
an anthill, but yelling to out-vie the carters. The tiny car-line seemed
to exist only to give opportunity for the perpetual clanging of the
gong; and the toy wharf railway expended as much steam on its whistle as
on its piston-power.
Stuart had visited the southern part of Haiti with his father,
especially the towns of Port-au-Prince and Jacamel, and he was struck
with the difference in the people. Cap Haitien is a working town and its
people are higher grade than the dwellers in the southern part of the
republic. The south, however, is more populous. Haiti is thickly
inhabited, with 2,500,000 people, of whom only 5,000 are foreigners, and
of these, not more than 1,000 are whites. The island is incredibly
fertile. A century and a quarter ago it was rich, and could be rich
again. Its coffee crop, alone, could bring in ample wealth.
To Stuart's eyes, coffee was everywhere. The carts were loaded with
coffee, the sacks the negroes carried were coffee-sacks, the shining
green berries were exposed to dry on stretches of sailcloth in vacant
lots, among the ruins on the sides of the streets. Haitian coffee is
among the best in the world, but the Haitian tax is so high that the
product cannot be marketed cheaply, the American public will not pay the
high prices it commands, and nearly all the crop is shipped to Europe.
"Look at that coffee!" Stuart's father had exclaimed, just a week
before. "Where do you suppose it comes from, Stuart? From cultivated
plantations? Very little of it. Most of the crop is picked from
half-wild shrubs which are the descendants of the carefully planted and
cultivated shrubs which still linger on the plantations established
under French rule, a century and a half ago. A hundred years of negro
power in Haiti has stamped deterioration, dirt and decay on the
island."
"But that'll all change, now we've taken charge of the republic!" had
declared Stuart, confident that the golden letters "U. S." would bring
about the millennium.
His father had wrinkled his brows in perplexity and doubt.
"It would change, my boy," he said, "if America had a free hand. But she
hasn't."
"Why not?"
"Because, officially, we have only stepped in to help the Haitians
arrive at 'self-determination.' The treaty calls for our aid for ten
years, with a possibility of continuing that protection for another ten
years. But we're not running the country, we're only policing it and
advising the Haitians as to how things should be handled."
"Do you think they'll learn?"
"To govern themselves, you mean? Yes. To govern themselves in a
civilized manner? No. I wouldn't go so far as to say that slavery or
peonage are the only ways to make the up-country Haitian negro work,
though a good many people who have studied conditions here think so.
"The program of the modern business man in Haiti is different: Make the
negro discontented with his primitive way of living, give him a taste
for unnecessary luxuries, teach him to envy his neighbor's wealth and
covet his neighbor's goods, and then make him work in order to earn the
money to gratify these wishes, and civilization will begin.
"Mark you, Stuart, I don't say that I endorse this program, I'm only
telling you, in half-a-dozen words, what it really is. It is sure,
though, that when the black man rules, he relapses into savagery; when
he obeys a white master, he rises toward civilization."
Stuart remembered this, now, as he sat outside the café, and looked
pridefully at the tents of the U. S. Marines in the distance. He
realized that American improvements in the coast towns had not changed
the nature of the Haitian negro, or creole, as he prefers to be called.
Under his father's instruction, the boy had studied Haitian history, and
he knew that the Spaniards had ruled by fear, the French had ruled by
fear, the negro emperors and presidents had ruled by fear, and, under
the direct eye of the U. S. Marines, Haiti is still ruled by fear. In a
dim way--for Stuart was too young to have grasped it all--the boy felt
that this was not militarism, but the discipline necessary to an
undeveloped race.
Only the year before, Stuart himself had been through an experience
which brought the innate savagery of the Haitian vividly before his
eyes. He had been in Port-au-Prince when the Cacos undertook to raid the
town, seize the island, and sweep the United States Marines into the
sea. And, as he had heard a Marine officer tell his father, but for a
chance accident, they might have succeeded.
In October, 1919, Charlemagne Peralte, the leader of the Cacos, was
killed by a small punitive party of U. S. Marines. The Cacos may be
described as Haitian patriots or revolutionists, devotees of serpent and
voodoo worship, loosely organized into a secret guerilla army. They
number at least 100,000 men, probably more. About one-half of the force
is armed with modern rifles. The headquarters of the Cacos is in the
mountain country in the center of the island, above the Plain of
Cul-de-Sac, where no white influence reaches. No one who knew Haitian
conditions doubted that revenge would be sought for Charlemagne's death,
and all through the winter of 1919-1920, the Marines were on the alert
for trouble.
The Cacos leadership had devolved upon Benoit, a highly educated negro,
who had secured the alliance of "the Black Pope" and Chu-Chu, the two
lieutenants of Charlemagne. Upon Benoit fell the duty of "chasing the
white men into the sea" and exterminating the Americans, just as
Toussaint l'Ouverture drove the English, and Dessalines, Christophe and
Pétion drove the French, a century before.
Nearly four years of American occupation had passed. That the purpose of
the United States was purely philanthropic was not--and is not--believed
by the vast majority of the Haitians. Though living conditions have
improved vastly, though brigandage on the plains has ceased, and though
terrorism has diminished, at heart only the Haitian merchants and
job-holders like the American occupation. The educated Creoles tolerate
it. The semi-savages of the hills resent it.
On January 16, some of the white men in Port-au-Prince noticed that the
Creoles were excited and nervous. At the Café Bordeaux, at the Seaside
Inn, at the Hotel Bellevue, strange groups met and mysterious passwords
were exchanged. Sullen and latent hostility was changing from
smouldering rancor to flaming hate. Port-au-Prince was ripe for revolt.
Stuart remembered his father's return that night.
"Son," he had said, putting a revolver on the little table beside his
bed, "I hope you won't have to use this, but, at least, I've taught you
to shoot straight."
That night, Benoit, gathering up the local detachments of his forces,
moved them in scattered groups through the abandoned plantations and off
the main roads to the outskirts of the city. He had over 1,800 men with
him. Most had modern rifles. All had machetes. All over the island other
bands were in readiness, their orders being to wait until they heard of
the fall of Port-au-Prince, when the massacre of all whites might begin.
Benoit's plan was to take the city at daybreak. At midnight, he started
three columns of 300 men each, from three directions. They wandered
into the city by twos and threes, taking up positions. Their orders
were, that, at the firing of a gun at daybreak, when the stores opened,
they were to rush through the business district, setting fires
everywhere and killing the white men and the gendarmerie. Benoit
believed that, while his men could not withstand a pitched battle with
the Marines, they could sweep the town in guerilla fashion when the
Marines were scattered here and there, putting out fires. Moreover, the
Cacos general was sure that, once a massacre of the whites was begun,
race hatred would put all the black population on his side.
Two o'clock in the morning came. Mr. Elliott, manager of a sugar
refinery at Hascoville, a suburb two miles out of the city, was
sleepless, and a vague uneasiness possessed him. Thinking that the fresh
air might be beneficial, he went to a window and looked out.
"Out of the myriad hissing, rustling and squawking noises of a tropic
night, he heard the unmistakable 'chuff-chuff-chuff' of a marching
column of barefoot men. He made out a single-file column moving rapidly
across a field, off the road. He made out the silhouetes of shouldered
rifles. Far off, under a yellow street lamp, he glimpsed a flash of a
red shirt. That was enough. He telephoned to the Marine Brigade that the
Cacos were about to raid Port-au-Prince.
"Benoit's bubble," continued the report of the Special Correspondent of
the _New York World_, "burst right there. Only about 150 of his 300
'shock troops' had reached the market-place. No fires had been set. The
people were all in bed and asleep. There were no materials for a panic.
"The Marines, in patrols and in larger formations, spread through the
streets swiftly to the posts arranged for emergency. Leslie Coombs, one
of the Marines, saw several men enter the market, where they had no
right to be; he ran to the door and was set upon by machete men, who
slashed him and cut him down, but not until he had emptied his
automatic.
"The shooting and hand-to-hand fighting spread in a flash all through
the business part of the city. The rest of the surprise detachment of
the Cacos made a rush for the center of the city. One block was set on
fire and burned.
"The Marines deployed steadily and quickly. They put sputtering machine
guns on the corners and cleaned the principal streets. There was
fighting on every street and alley of a district more than a mile
square.
"The Cacos stood their ground bravely for a while, but their case was
hopeless. The American fire withered them. First those on the rim of the
city, and then those inside, turned their faces to the hills. The main
body, realizing that the plan of attack was ruined, started a pell-mell
retreat.
"The Marines moved from the center of the city, killing every colored
man who was not in the olive-drab uniform of the gendarmerie.
"As the sky turned pink and then flashed into blazing daylight, the
fight became a hunt. On every road and trail leading from the city,
Marine hunted Cacos.
"One hundred and twenty-two dead Cacos were found in and about the city;
bodies found along the line of retreat in the next few days raised the
total of known dead to 176. There were numerous prisoners, among them
the famous chieftain, Chu-Chu." It was a swift and merciless affair,
but, as Stuart's father had commented, no one who knew and understood
Haitian conditions denied that it had been well and wisely done.
Stuart had seen some of the fighting, and his father had pointed out to
him that Port-au-Prince is not the whole of Haiti, nor does one repulse
quell a revolt. The boy knew, and the Cuban, watching him, knew that for
every man the Marines had slain, two had joined the Cacos and had sworn
the blood-oath before the High Priest and the High Priestess (papaloi
and mamaloi) of Voodoo.
Revolt against the American Occupation, therefore, was an ever-present
danger. Stuart wondered whether the negro who had been sent to him by
Manuel were a Cacos, and, if so, whether his father were a prisoner
among the Cacos. Manuel, for his part, wondered who this boy might be,
who had darkened his skin in disguise. One thing the Cuban had
determined and that was that he would not let the boy know that his
disguise had been penetrated. None the less, he must find out, if
possible, how the lad had come to know about the meeting-place of the
conspirators.
Finishing his drink, the Cuban rose, and, motioning to Stuart to precede
him, walked to the sparsely settled section between the commercial
center of the town and the Marine encampment. When the shouts of the
toiling workers had grown faint in the distance, the Cuban stopped.
"Boy!" he called.
Stuart braced himself. He knew that the moment of his test had come. His
heart thumped at his ribs, but he kept his expression from betraying
fear. He turned and faced the Cuban.
"In my right-hand pocket," said Manuel, in his soft and languorous
voice, "is a revolver. My finger is on the trigger. If you tell one
lie--why, that is the end of you! Why did you mention the Citadel of the
Black Emperor?"
Stuart's heart gave a bound of relief. He judged, from Manuel's manner,
that his disguise had not been guessed. Elated with this supposed
success, he commenced to tell glibly the tale he had prepared and
studied out the day before.
"I wanted to give you a warning," he said.
The Cuban's gaze deepened.
"Warning? What kind of a warning? From whom?"
"Cesar Leborge," answered Stuart. He had judged from his father's papers
that the two were engaged in a conspiracy, and thought that he could do
nothing better than to provoke enmity between them. The proverb "When
thieves fall out, honest men come by their own," rang through his head.
Manuel was obviously impressed.
"What do you know about this?" he asked curtly. "Tell your story."
"I hate Leborge," declared Stuart, trying to speak as a negro boy would
speak. "He took away our land and killed my father. I want to kill him.
He never talks to anybody, but he talks to himself. The other night I
overheard him saying he 'must get rid of that Cuban at the Citadel of
the Black Emperor.'
"So when I saw you here in Cap Haitien, I took a chance on it's being
you he meant. If it hadn't been you, my asking you if you wanted a guide
wouldn't have been out of the way."
"You are a very clever boy," said Manuel, and turned away to suppress a
smile.
Certainly, he thought, this boy was a very clumsy liar. Stuart had never
tried to play a part before, and had no natural aptitude for it. His
imitation of the Haitian accent was poor, his manner lacked the
alternations of arrogance and humility that the Haitian black wears.
Then his story of the shadowing of Leborge was not at all in character.
And, besides, as the Cuban had convinced himself, the boy was not a
Haitian negro at all.
Then, suddenly, a new thought flashed across Manuel's mind. He had
thought only of his fellow-conspirators as traitors. But there was one
other who had some inkling of the plot--Garfield, the American.
And Garfield had a boy!
The Cuban's lip curled with contempt at the ease with which he had
unmasked Stuart. He had only to laugh and announce his discovery, for
the boy to be made powerless.
It was a temptation. But Manuel was too wily to yield to a temptation
merely because it was pleasurable. As long as the boy did not know that
he had been found out, he would live in a Fool's Paradise of his own
cleverness. Believing himself unsuspected, he would carry out his
plans--whatever they were--the while that Manuel, knowing his secret,
could play with him as a cat plays with a mouse she has crippled.
He decided to appear to believe this poorly woven story.
"If you hate Leborge, and Leborge hates me," he said, "I suppose we are
both his enemies. I presume," he added, shrewdly, "if I refused to take
you with me to the Citadel of the Black Emperor, you would shadow me,
and go any way."
A flash of assent came into the boy's eyes, which, he was not quick
enough to suppress. Decidedly, Stuart was not cut out for a conspirator,
and would never be a match for the Cuban in guile.
"I see you would," the Cuban continued. "Well, I would rather have you
within my sight. Here is money. Tomorrow, an hour after sunrise, be at
the door of the hotel with the best horses you can find. I wish to be at
Millot by evening."
Stuart took the money and preceded Manuel into the town, chuckling
inwardly at his cleverness in outwitting this keen conspirator. But he
would have been less elated with his success if he had heard the Cuban
mutter, as he turned into the porch of the hotel,
"First, the father. Now, the son!"