CHAPTER XXX.

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.