THE BLOOD-STAINED CITADEL
A foul, slimy ooze, compounded of fat soil, rotting vegetation and
verdigris-colored scum, with a fainter green mark meandering through
it--such was the road to Millot.
Stuart and the Cuban, the boy riding ahead, were picking their away
across this noisome tract of land.
For a few miles out of Cap Haitien, where the finger of American
influence had reached, an air of decency and even of prosperity had
begun to return. Near the town, the road had been repaired. Fields, long
abandoned, showed signs of cultivation, anew.
Two hours' ride out, however, it became evident that the new power had
not reached so far. The road had dwindled to a trail of ruts, which
staggered hither and thither in an effort to escape the quagmires--which
it did not escape. Twice, already, Stuart's horse had been mired and he
had to get out of the saddle and half-crawl, half-wriggle on his belly,
in the smothering and sucking mud. So far, Manuel had escaped, by the
simple device of not passing over any spot which the boy had not tried
first.
This caution was not to serve him long, however.
At some sight or sound unnoticed by the rider, Manuel's horse shied from
off the narrow path of tussocks on which it was picking its way, and
swerved directly into the morass.
The Cuban, unwilling to get into the mud, tried to urge the little horse
to get out. Two or three desperate plunges only drove it down deeper and
it slipped backward into the clawing mire.
Manuel threw himself from his horse, but he had waited almost too long,
and the bog began to draw him down. He was forced to cry for help.
Stuart, turning in his saddle, saw what had happened. He jumped off his
horse and ran to help the Cuban. The distance was too great for a
hand-clasp. The ragged trousers which Stuart was wearing in his disguise
as a Haitian lad were only held up by a piece of string; he had no belt
which he could throw. There was no sapling growing near enough to make a
stick.
Then there came into the boy's mind an incident in a Western story he
had read.
Darting back to his horse, he unfastened the saddle girth, and, hurrying
back to where Manuel was floundering in the mud, he threw the saddle
outwards, holding the end of the girth. It was just long enough to
reach. With the help of the flat surface given by the saddle and a
gradual pulling of the girth by Stuart, the Cuban was at last able to
crawl out.
The gallant little horse, freed from its rider's weight, had reached a
point where it could be helped, and the two aided the beast to get its
forefeet on solid land.
This rescue broke down much of the distance and some of the hostility
between Manuel and Stuart, and, as soon as the road began to rise from
the quagmire country, and was wide enough to permit it, the Cuban
ordered the boy to ride beside him. Naturally, the conversation dealt
with the trail and its dangers.
"You would hardly think," said the Cuban, "that, a hundred years ago, a
stone-built road, as straight as an arrow, ran from Cap Haitien to
Millot, and that over it, Toussaint l'Ouverture, 'the Black Napoleon,'
was wont to ride at breakneck speed, and Christophe, 'the black
Emperor,' drove his gaudy carriage with much pomp and display."
To those who take the road from Cap Haitien to Millot today, the
existence of that ancient highway seems incredible. Yet, though only a
century old, it is almost as hopelessly lost as the road in the Sahara
Desert over which, once, toiling slaves in Egypt dragged the huge stones
of which the Pyramids of Ghizeh were built.
Stuart and the Cuban had made a late start. In spite of the powerful
political influence which the Cuban seemed to wield, his departure had
been fraught with suspicion. The Military Governor, a gigantic
coal-black negro, had at first refused to grant permission for Polliovo
to visit the Citadel; the Commandant of Marines had given him a warning
which was almost an ultimatum.
Manuel, with great suavity, had overset the former and defied the
latter. His story was of the smoothest. He was a military strategist, he
declared, and General Leborge had asked him to investigate the citadel,
in order to determine its value as the site for a modern fort.
Stuart's part in the adventure was outwardly simple. No one thought it
worth while to question him, and he accompanied the Cuban as a guide and
horse-boy.
Although the road improved as the higher land was reached, it was dusk
when the two riders arrived at the foothills around Millot.
Dark fell quickly, and, with the dark, came a low palpitating rumble,
that distant throbbing of sound, that malevolent vibrance which gives to
every Haitian moonlit night an oppression and a fear all its own.
"Rhoo-oo-oom--Rhoo-oo-oom--Rhoo-oo-oom!"
Muffled, dull, pulsating, unceasing, the thrummed tom-tom set all the
air in motion. The vibrance scarcely seemed to be sound, rather did it
seem to be a slower tapping of air-waves on the drum of the ear, too low
to be actually heard, but yet beating with a maddening persistence.
There was a savagery in the sound, so disquieting, that a deep sigh of
relief escaped from the boy's lungs when he saw the lights of Millot
twinkling in the distance. Somehow, the presence of houses and people
took away the sinister sound of the tom-tom and made it seem like an
ordinary drum.
Millot, in the faint moonlight, revealed itself as a small village,
nestling under high mountains. Signs of former greatness were visible in
the old gates which flanked the opening into its main street, but the
greater part of the houses were thatched huts.
When at the very entrance of the village, there came a ringing
challenge,
"Halt! Who goes there?"
"A visitor to the General," was Manuel's answer.
The barefoot sentry, whose uniform consisted of a forage cap, a coat
with one sleeve torn off and a pair of frayed trousers, but whose rifle
was of the most up-to-date pattern, was at once joined by several
others, not more splendidly arrayed than himself.
As with one voice, they declared that the general could not be
disturbed, but the Cuban carried matters with a high hand. Dismounting,
he ordered one of the sentries to precede him and announce his coming,
and bade Stuart see that the horses were well looked after and ready for
travel in the morning, "or his back should have a taste of the whip."
This phrase, while it only increased the enmity the soldiers felt
toward the "white," had the effect of removing all suspicion from
Stuart, which, as the lad guessed, was the reason for Manuel's threat.
Feeling sure that the boy would have the same animosity to his master
that they felt, the soldiers seized the opportunity to while away the
monotonous hours of their duty in talk.
"What does he want, this 'white'?" they asked, suspiciously.
"Like all whites," answered Stuart, striving to talk in the character of
the negro horse-boy, "he wants something he has no right to have."
"And what is that?"
"Information. He says he is a military strategist, and is going to make
La Ferrière, up there, a modern fort."
"He will never get there," said one of the soldiers.
"You think not?"
"It is sure that he will not get there. Permission is refused always,
Yes. The General is afraid lest a 'white' should find the buried money."
"Christophe's treasure?" queried the boy, innocently. He had never heard
of this treasure before, but rightly guessed that if it were supposed to
be hidden in the Citadel of the Black Emperor, it must have been placed
there by no one but the grim old tyrant himself.
"But surely. Yes. You, in the south"--Stuart had volunteered the
information that he came from the southern part of the island--"have
you not heard the story of Dimanche (Sunday) Esnan?"
"I never heard it, No," Stuart answered.
"It was of strange, Yes," the soldier proceeded. "Christophe was rich,
ah, how rich! He had all the money of the republic. He spent it like an
emperor. You shall see for yourself, if you look, what Christophe spent
in building palaces, but no one shall say how much he spent on his own
pleasures. He had a court, like the great courts of Europe, and not a
'white' in them. Ah, he was very rich and powerful, Christophe. It is
said that, when he died, he left 65,000,000 gourdes (then worth about
$15,000,000) and this he buried, should he need money in order to
escape. But, as even an ignorant like you will know, he did not escape."
"I know," replied Stuart, "he blew out his brains."
"Right over there, he did it!" the soldier agreed, pointing into the
night. "But listen to the story of the treasure:
"When I was but a little older than a boy like you, into the Vache d'Or
(a former gambling-house of some fame) there strolled this Dimanche
Esnan. He swaggered in, as one with plenty of money in his pocket.
"Upon the table he threw some coins.
"The croupier stared down at those coins, with eyes as cold and fixed as
those of a fer-de-lance ready to strike. The play at the table stopped.
"It was a moment!
"The coins were Spanish doubloons!"
"A pirate hoard?" suggested Stuart.
"It was thought. But this Dimanche had not been off the island for
years! And the buccaneers' treasure is at Tortugas, as is well known.
"This Dimanche was at once asked if he had found Christophe's treasure,
for where else would a man find Spanish doubloons of a century ago? It
was plain, Yes!
"Well, what would you? President Hippolyte sent for him. He offered to
make him a general, a full general, if he would but tell where he had
found the treasure. He showed him the uniform. It was gold laced, yes,
gold lace all over! Dimanche was nearly tempted, but not quite.
"Then they let him come back here, to Cap Haitien, Yes. All the day and
all the night he was kept under watch. Ah, that was a strict watch!
Every one of the guards thought that he might be the one to get clue to
the place of the buried treasure, look you!
"But the general here, at that time, was not a patient man, No! Besides,
he wanted the treasure. He wanted it without having the President of the
Republic know. With sixty-five million gourdes he might push away the
President and be president himself, who knows?
"What would you? The general put Dimanche in prison and put him to the
question (torture) but Dimanche said nothing. Ah, he was stubborn, that
Dimanche. He said nothing, nothing! The general did not dare to kill
him, for he knew that the President had given orders to have the man
watched.
"So the prison doors were set open. Pouf! Away disappears Dimanche and
has not been seen since. He still carries the secret of the treasure of
Christophe--that is, if he is not dead."
"But didn't the President try to find the hoard on his own account?"
asked Stuart.
"But, most surely! My father was one of the soldiers in the party which
searched in all the wonderful palaces that Christophe had built for
himself in 'Without Worry,' in 'Queen's Delight,' in 'The Glory,' in
'Beautiful View,' yes, even in the haunted Citadel of La Ferrière. No, I
should not have liked to do that, it is surely haunted. But they found
nothing.
"Me, I think that the money is in the citadel. Has not the ghost of
Christophe been seen to walk there? And why should the ghost walk if it
had not a reason to walk? Eh?"
"That does seem reasonable," answered Stuart, in response to the
soldier's triumphant tone.
"But, most sure! So, Boy," the guard concluded, "it is easy to see why
the General does not like any 'white' to go to the Citadel. Perhaps the
'white,' whose horses you look after, has seen Dimanche. Who knows? So
he will not be let get up there. You may be sure of that."
"One can't ever say," answered the boy. "I must be ready for the
morning," and, with a word of farewell, he sauntered into the village of
Millot, to find some kind of stabling and food for the horses, and, if
possible, some shelter for himself.
Morning found Stuart outside the door of the general's "mansion," a
straw-thatched building, comprising three rooms and a narrow brick-paved
verandah. From what the soldiers had said the night before, the boy had
not the slightest expectation of the Cuban's success.
He had not waited long, however, before Manuel came out through the
door, obsequiously followed by a coal-black general daubed with gold
lace--most of which was unsewn and hanging in tatters, and all of which
was tarnished. He was strongly, even violently, urging upon Manuel the
need of an escort. The Cuban not only disdained the question, but, most
evidently, disdained and disregarded the man.
This extraordinary scene was closed by the General, the commandant of
the entire commune, holding out his hand for a tip. Manuel put a
five-gourdes bill (two dollars and a half) into the outstretched palm,
and mounted his horse to an accompaniment of a profusion of thanks.
A short distance out of Millot, the two riders came to the ruins of
Christophe's palace of "Without Worry" (Sans Souci). It was once a
veritable palace, situated on the top of a small hill overlooking a deep
ravine. Great flights of stone steps led up to it, while terrace upon
terrace of what once were exquisitely kept gardens, filled with the
finest statuary, stepped to the depths below.
Now, the gardens are waste, the statuary broken and the terraces are
washed into gullies by the rains. The palace itself is not less
lamentable. The walls are crumbling. Everything movable from the
interior has been looted. Trees grow outward from the upper windows,
and, in the cracks of masonry and marble floors, a tropic vegetation has
sprung up. Moss covers the mosaics, and the carved woodwork has become
the prey of the worm.
A little further on, at a hut which the General had described, Manuel
and Stuart left their horses, and then began the steep climb up La
Ferrière. From the steaming heat of the plain below, the climbers passed
into the region of cold. The remains of a road were there, but the track
was so indistinct as to render it difficult to follow.
"Where the dense forest begins," Manuel explained, "we shall find a
warder. I would rather be without him, but the General does not dare to
send a message that a 'white' may visit the Citadel unaccompanied.
Besides, I doubt if we could find the way, though once this was a wide
road, fit for carriage travel, on which the Black Emperor drove in pomp
and state to his citadel. It is incredible!"
"What is incredible?" asked Stuart.
"That Christophe should have been able to make these negroes work for
him as no people in the world have worked since the days when the
Pharaohs of Egypt built the Pyramids. You will see the vast size of the
Citadel. You see the steepness of the mountain. Consider it!
"The materials for the whole huge pile of building and the three hundred
cannon with which it was fortified, were dragged up these steep mountain
scarps and cliffsides by human hands. Christophe employed the troops
mercilessly in this labor and subdued mutiny by the simple policy of not
only shooting the mutineers, but also a corresponding number of innocent
men, as well, just to teach a lesson. Whole villages were commandeered.
Sex made no difference. Women worked side by side with men, were whipped
side by side with men, and, if they weakened, were knifed or shot and
thrown into a ditch. One of Christophe's overseers is said to have
boasted that he could have made a roadway of human bones from Sans Souci
to the summit."
The words "bloody ruffian" were on Stuart's lips, but, just in time, he
remembered his character, and replied instead,
"But Christophe was a great man!"
The boy knew well that though Toussaint L'Ouverture, the "Black
Napoleon," had truly been a great man in every sense of the word, a
liberator, general and administrator, the Haitians think little of him,
because he believed that blacks, mulattoes and whites should have an
equal chance. Dessalines and Christophe, monsters of brutality, are the
heroes of Haiti, because they massacred everyone who was not coal-black.
Manuel cast a sidelong glance at Stuart, smiling inwardly at the boy's
attempt to maintain his disguise, that disguise which the Cuban had so
quickly pierced, and shrugged his shoulders.
"What would you!" he rejoined. "You see yourself, it is the only
government that Haitians understand. To this day, a century later, this
part of the island is better than the south, because of the impress of
the reign of Christophe. Nothing changes Haiti!"
"The Americans?" queried Stuart, trying to put a note of dislike into
his voice, but intensely interested in his own question.
"They have changed nothing!" declared the Cuban, emphatically. "They
have painted the faces of the coast towns, and that is all. You heard
that drum, the night before last? Not until the tom-tom has ceased to
beat in Haiti, can anything be changed."
He rose, threw away the stump of his cigar, and motioned to the boy to
take up the trail.
A few hundred yards higher, a raucous shout halted them.
There was a rustle of branches, and a negro colossus, of the low-browed,
heavy-jawed type, plunged through the thicket and barred the path.
Bareheaded, barefooted, his shirt consisting of a piece of cloth with
holes for head and arms, his trousers torn to tatters by thorns, the
warder of the Citadel looked what he was, a Caco machete man, little
removed from the ferocity of African savagery.
To his shout, the Cuban deigned no answer.
He broke a switch from a bush, walked toward the negro guard with a
contemptuous look and lashed him across the face with the switch,
ordering him to lead the way.
Stuart expected to see the Cuban cut down with one stroke of the
machete.
Far from it. Cowed at once, the negro cringed, as to a master, and,
without a word as to Manuel's authority, led the way up the trail.
A hundred yards higher, all sign of a path was lost. The negro warder
was compelled to use his machete to cut a way through thorny underbrush
and creepers in order to make a path for the "white's" feet.
The afternoon was well advanced when openings amid the trees showed,
beetling overhead, the gray walls of the Citadel. An hour's further
climbing brought them to the guard-house, where eight men watch
continually, each relief for a period of a month, against the intrusion
of strangers into Christophe's Citadel.
An irregularly disposed clump of posts, stuck into the ground, supported
a rusted and broken tin roof, without walls, but boasting a brushwood
pile on one side--such was the entire barracks of the La Ferrière
garrison. The furniture consisted only of a log on which to sit, a few
cooking utensils, and a pile of rags in the driest corner.
True, there was plenty of room in the Citadel. Many a chamber in the
ruined place was dry and sheltered from the weather, many a corner was
there where the watchers could have made themselves warm and
comfortable. They were not forbidden to sleep there. On the contrary,
they were encouraged. But never a one would do so. They declared the
place haunted and were in a state of terror even to be near it.
Manuel, after pausing for a moment to take his breath, strode up to the
group.
"Get in there, some of you!" he ordered, "And show me the way. I want to
see over the place."
A chorus of wails arose. The guards shrank and cowered at the
suggestion. Their terror was more than panicky, it was even hysterical.
They shook with convulsive jerks of fear, as though they had a spasm
disease.
"Christophe!" cried one of them, in a sort of howl. "Christophe! For
three days he is here, Yes! We see him walk, Yes! If we go in, he will
make us jump off the cliff!"
And another added, with an undertone of superstitious horror,
"And his ghost will be waiting at the bottom to carry our ghosts away!"
"Fools!" declared Manuel, "open the door!"
He pointed to where the huge, rusty iron-bound door frowned in the blank
wall of gray stone.
The negro guards hung back and gabbled together, but Manuel turned upon
them fiercely with uplifted switch. At that, the giant warder, who had
already acknowledged the mastership, slouched forward and pulled open
the creaking door, leaving a dark opening from which came the smell of
foul air and poisonous vegetation.
Manuel motioned with his head for Stuart to precede him.
The boy hesitated. He was brave enough, but the terror of the negroes
was catching. He would not have admitted to being afraid, but there was
a lump in his throat and his legs felt unsteady.
The Cuban, who felt sure that Stuart was not the negro horse-boy that he
seemed, judged this appearance of fear as evidence that the boy was
still playing a part, and turned on him with a snarl.
"Get in there, you!"
Screwing up his courage, Stuart stepped forward, though hesitatingly and
unwillingly. Just as he crossed the threshold, the giant warder reached
out a gaunt hand and pulled him back.
"Not that way!" he said. "Two steps more, Boy, and you are dead!"
Manuel started. From his pocket he took a portable electric light and
flashed it upon the ground just within the entrance.
The negro guard was right. Immediately before him lay a deep pit, how
deep there was no means of saying. Once it had been covered with a
trap-door, which could be worked from the Inner Citadel. Thus
Christophe, if he pleased, could send a message of welcome to his
visitors, and drop them to a living death with the words of hospitality
on his lips.
"If I had gone first," said Manuel quietly, turning to the guards, "not
one of you would have said a word!"
The negroes slunk away under his gaze. The accusation was true. They had
no love for the "whites." Only the fact that they believed Stuart to be
a negro boy had saved him.
The boy looked down at that profound dungeon, from which rose a faint
stench, and shuddered.
There was a heavy pause. Manuel was debating whether he dare try and
force the guards to show the way. If he ordered it, he would have to
force it through, or the prestige he had won would be lost. He dared
not. As between the terror of a white man's gun, and the terror of a
"ha'nt," the latter was the more powerful.
Motioning Stuart to enter and showing the narrow ledge around the pit
with the spotlight, he followed. Then he turned to the guards clustered
outside.
"Close the door!" he ordered, curtly.
This command was obeyed with alacrity. The negro guards were only too
anxious to see that hole in the wall shut. Suppose the ghost of
Christophe should come gliding out among them!
So far, the Cuban was safe. He had reached the Citadel and entered it.
He had no fear that the warders would open it again to spy on him.
Their terror was too real.
Raising the spotlight so that it flashed full upon Stuart's face, the
Cuban spoke.
"Understand me, now," he said curtly, and with a hard ring in his voice.
"How much of your story may be true and how much false I have not yet
found out. But, if what you say about hating Leborge is true, I will put
you in a place where you will be able to see him. You have a pistol, I
know. If you see Leborge raise pistol or knife against me, shoot, and
shoot quickly! I will make you rich!"
Stuart thought to himself that if the conspirators were to come to
quarreling, that was the very time he would keep still. He, certainly,
had no desire for bloodshed, nor any intention to fire at anybody, if he
could help it. But he only answered,
"I understand."
Manuel's intention was no less concealed. He planned either to reveal
the boy to his fellow-conspirators, or else, to reveal him to the negro
warders as a white intruder. Either way, he figured, there would be an
end to the boy.
By the light of his lamp, consulting a small manuscript chart of the
ruin, Manuel passed through many tortuous passages and dark chambers
until he came to a ruined wall. Climbing a few feet up the crumbling
stones, he set his eye to a crevice, nodded as though satisfied,
wrenched away several more stones, laying these down silently and
beckoned Stuart to come beside him.
The boy looked down on a circular hall, the outer arc of which was
pierced with ruined windows opening to the sky.
"Leborge will sit there!" whispered Manuel, pointing. "Kill him, and you
will be rich!"
Stuart nodded. He did not trust himself to speak.
Walking as silently as he could, Manuel left the place, pondering in his
own mind what he was going to do with the boy. Should he reveal the
secret and have his fellow-conspirators kill him? Should he turn him
over to the machetes of the negroes? Or should he kill the boy, himself?
One thing he had determined--that Stuart should not reach the plains
below, alive.
And Stuart, in that hole of the ruined wall, crouched and watched. Of
what was to happen in that room below, what dark plot he was to hear, he
had no knowledge. Yet, over his eager desire to find out this conspiracy
against the United States, above his anxiety with regard to the fate of
his father, one question loomed in ever larger and blacker proportions--
He had got into the Citadel. How was he to get out?