(AUTHORITY, ORDER, PEACE)
Three days of heat, glare, hubbub, and anxious suspense dragged away,
and Thursday's gorgeous sunset brought a change. The Danish frigate,
bright with flags and swarming with sailors, swept in, dropped anchor,
and wrapped herself in thunder and white smoke. Soon she lowered a
boat, a glittering officer took its tiller-ropes, its long oars
flashed, and it bore away to the fort. But evening fell, a starry
silence reigned, and when a late moon rose we slept.
Next morning we knew that Captain Erminger, of the frigate, had assumed
command over the whole island, declared martial law, landed his
marines, and begun operations. Soon the harbor was populous again,
with refugees returning home. Tom came with his boat. Just as we
started landward a schooner came round the bluffs bringing the
Spaniards. At early twilight these landed and marched with much
clatter through the vacant streets to the town's various points of
entrance, there to mount guard, the Danes having gone to scatter the
insurgents.
The pursuing forces, in two bodies, were to move toward each other from
opposite ends of the island, spanning it from sea to sea and meeting in
the centre, thus entirely breaking up the bands of aimless pillagers
into which the insurrection had already dispersed. This took but a few
days. Buddoe was almost at once trapped by the baldest flatteries of
two leading Danish residents and, finding himself without even the
honor of armed capture, betrayed his confederates and disappeared.
Only one small band of blacks made any marked resistance. Under a
certain "Moses" they occupied a hill, hurling down stones upon their
assailants, but were soon captured. Many leaders of the revolt were
condemned and shot, displaying in most cases a total absence of
fortitude.
In less than a week from the day of flight to the ships quiet was
restored, and a meeting of planters was adopting rules and rates for
the employment of the freed slaves. Some estates resumed work at once;
on others the ravages of the torch had first to be repaired. Some
negroes would not work, and it was months before all the windmills on
the hills were once more whirling. The Spaniards lingered long, but
were finally relieved by a Danish regiment. Captain Erminger was
commended by his home government. The governor was censured and
superseded. The planters got no pay for their slaves.
The government may have argued that the ex-master should no more be
paid for his slave than the ex-slave recover back pay for his labor;
and that, after all, a general emancipation was only a moderate raising
of wages unjustly low and uniform. Both kings and congresses will at
times do the easy thing instead of the fair one and let two wrongs
offset each other. Make haste, rising generations! and, as you truly
honor your fathers, bring to their graves the garlandry of juster laws
and kinder, purer days.
To different minds this true story will speak, no doubt, a varying
counsel. Some will believe that the lovely island was saved from the
agonies of a Haytian revolution only through iron suppression. To
others it will appear that the old governor's rashly timorous edict
was, after all, the true source of deliverance. Certainly the question
remains, whether even the most sudden and ill-timed concession of
rights, if only backed by energetic police action, is not a prompter,
surer cure for public disorder than whole batteries of artillery
without the concession of rights. I believe the most blundering effort
for the prompt undoing of a grievous wrong is safer than the shrewdest
or strongest effort for its continuance. Meanwhile, with what patience
doth God wait for man to learn his lessons! The Holy Cross still
glitters on the bosom of its crystal sea, as it shone before the Carib
danced on its snowy sands, and as it will still shine when some new
Columbus, as yet unborn, brings to it the Christianity of a purer day
than ours.
Chester shook the pages together on his knee.
"Oh-h-h!" cried Mlle. Corinne to Yvonne, to Aline, to Mlle. Castanado,
"the en'! and--where is all that abbout that beautiful cat what was
the proprity of Dora? Everything abbout that cat of Dora--_scratch
out_! Ah, Mr. Chezter! Yvonne and me, we find that the moze am-using
part--that episode of the cat--that large, wonderful, mazculine cat of
Dora! Ah, madame" [to the chair], "hardly Marie Madeleine is more
wonderful than that--when Jack pritend to lift his li'l' miztress
through the surf of the sea, how he _flew_ at the throat of Jack, that
aztonishing mazculine cat! Ah, M'sieu' Beloiseau!--and to scradge
that!"
But Beloiseau was judicially calm. "Yes, I rim-ember that portion.
Scientific-ally I foun' that very interezting; but, like Mr. Chezter, I
thing tha'z better _art_ that the tom-cat be elimin-ate."
"Well," said the chair, "w'at we want to settle--shall we accep' that
riv-ision of Mr. Chezter, to combine it in the book--'Clock in the
Sky,' 'Angel of the Lord,' 'Holy Crozz'--seem' to me that combination
goin' to sell like hot cake'."
"Yes! Agcept!" came promptly from two or three.
"Any oppose'? There is not any oppose'--Seraphine--Marcel--you'll be
so good to pazz those rif-reshment?"