At ten o’clock, however, Georges thought he discerned a faint murmur coming from the direction of the Malabar camp. It was from here, remember, that the rebels were supposed to stream as they made for their rendezvous on the bank of the rivière des Lataniers. He filed away as fast as he could at the iron bar. Its base had been completely sawed through; he now concentrated his efforts at the top.
The noise outside began to grow, and there was no longer any doubt of its source: It was the mingled voices of several thousand men. Laïza had kept his word. A smile of joy came to Georges’s lips, and he flushed with excitement and pride. The battle was close at hand! They could not be certain of victory but, by God, they would fight for it!
And their leader would be with them for the battle. The bar now held by a thread. Heart pounding, Georges strained his ears to listen. The noise was growing nearer and nearer, and the light he had noticed earlier shone more and more brilliantly. Could Port Louis be on fire already? No; it was impossible—there were no cries of distress.
Even more confusing, the rumble of shouting voices sounded joyous rather than threatening. No gunfire could be heard, not a single shot; the street on which the guardhouse stood remained deserted and perfectly silent. He waited fifteen more minutes, hoping to hear a gunshot or some sound that would dispel his uncertainty about whether the revolt had begun—but the same strange hum of voices went on, a low buzz unmarked by shouts or screams.
Georges decided that the time had come for his escape. One strong tug, and the bar gave way. Fetching the rope, he tied it securely to the broken base, dropped the sawed-off bar into the street below so that he might take it to use as a weapon, and, squeezing through the opening he had created, lowered himself smoothly to freedom.
Immediately he picked up the iron bar and moved in the direction from which the noise had come. As he approached the rue de Paris, which traversed the entire northern quarter of the town, he saw the light again—even stronger this time, and accompanied by the ever-growing rumble of voices. Finally he reached a brightly lit corner, and the mystery was explained.
Every street leading toward the Malabar camp was illuminated as if in preparation for some great festival. In front of each house was an uncorked barrel of brandy, rum, or eau-de-vie, obviously free and there for the taking.
The rebels had set out for Port Louis with vengeance in their hearts, shouting the battle cry, but when they arrived in town they had been confronted with glowing bonfires and the inviting barrels. Despite Laïza’s commands to keep moving and their own fears that the alcohol might be poisoned, the temptation had been too great. Both fear and discipline had been overthrown by their natural urges. A few men broke ranks to taste the spirits, and their exclamations of approval had moved the rest to follow suit. In an instant the entire multitude, which could have overwhelmed Port Louis’s defenders with ease, scattered. The city was safe. Groups of men surrounded the barrels, happily availing themselves of the brandy and rum, that eternal poison of the black races, so irresistible for the average Negro that he will sell his father, mother, children, and very frequently himself for a drink of it.
This, then, was the source of the strangely joyful shouts Georges had been unable to comprehend. The governor had obviously heeded the advice given to him by Jacques Munier, which had turned out to be sound indeed. The flames of the insurrection had already been dampened before the rebels even reached the town center or crossed the quarter stretching from Petite-Montagne to Trou-Fanfaron, and within a hundred yards of Government House they had been extinguished altogether.
As he stood alone, watching the spectacle, Georges knew that his hopes had been dashed. He remembered the prediction Jacques had made the day before, and was flooded with shame and rage. The men he had expected to lead in an uprising that would shake the island to its very foundations, that would avenge two centuries of slavery and pave the way for a free and victorious future, now reeled drunkenly before him, singing and dancing, laughing and staggering—and thoroughly disarmed. A few hundred soldiers would now have no trouble in driving all ten thousand of them back home to their masters.
In that instant Georges realized that all his long and painful labor had been wasted. All the time he had devoted to the study and improvement of his own heart, his strength, his worth: It had been in vain. The superiority of character that God had given him and that he had built upon with education and self-discipline had now been brought to nothing by the primitive instincts of men who loved their drink more than their liberty.
Georges felt his ambition and his pride, which had carried him briefly to the highest mountaintop and shown him the whole world lying at his feet, crumble and fall away. It was all gone, like a dream. He found himself standing alone where his false pride had led him.
He gripped the iron bar in his fist, seized with a ferocious desire to plunge into the crowd of revelers and crush the heads that had not had enough sense to resist temptation.
Several curious passersby, who did not understand why the governor had arranged for île de France’s slaves to be fêted in such a manner, had stopped to gape in astonishment at the scene. Georges dashed from group to scurvy group, gazing down the long and brightly lit streets filled with drunken Negroes and buzzing with the noise of their revelry. All he wanted now was to find the only man he knew he could still trust in the midst of this madness—Laïza.
Suddenly there was a loud noise from the direction of the guardhouse, followed by a few gunshots—some sharp and precise, as if fired by trained marksmen; others irregular. Somewhere the two sides were actually fighting! Georges ran toward the sounds, and in five minutes he was back on rue du Gouvernement.
A small force was indeed battling there, led by Laïza—who had been informed that Georges was a prisoner, and had handpicked four hundred men to march on the guardhouse and free him.
It appeared that Lord Murray had anticipated this, for as soon as the band of rescuers appeared, it had been set upon by British troops. Laïza had also expected a struggle—but he had counted on the main body of rebels to provide a sufficient diversion, and that, as I have told you, had failed to materialize for the reasons we now know all too well.
Georges now launched himself into the midst of the fighting, calling Laïza’s name as loudly as he could. He had, at last, found a black who was truly worthy of being called a man, and who had a strength of character equal to his own.
The two men met in the center of the clashing throng and, heedless of the commotion and the bullets whizzing past them, exchanged a few of those short and shouted words called for in such extreme situations. Georges told Laïza of the rebels’ desertion; the other man shook his head and said merely, “All is lost.”
Georges, wanting to revive his friend’s spirits, suggested that maybe the drunken men could be roused to action once again—but Laïza replied with a smile of supreme disdain. “No,” he said, “they will keep drinking until there is no more brandy, and the governor has supplied them all too well. We cannot hope to win.”
With Georges free, the reason for the fighting at Government House vanished. There was nothing to do but regret the dozen lives already lost and give the signal to retreat. However, it soon became clear that they could not escape via the rue du Gouvernement. Another British troop, which had been lying in wait at the powder magazine, had blocked off the end of the street while Laïza and Georges were occupied, and they could not leave the same way they had come. They could only plunge into the maze of side streets surrounding the Palais de Justice and make a dash for the Malabar camp.
It took only two hundred steps to put them back in the quarter where the barrels of rum and brandy had been set out. The scene had degenerated even further; by now the blacks there were thoroughly intoxicated. At the ends of the streets English troops stood at the ready, their bayonets gleaming faintly in the light from the bonfires.
Georges and Laïza looked at each other and smiled briefly, the sort of hard, fierce expression a man wears when
there is nothing more to be done, when he is resigned to his own death and his only desire is to die honorably. The two men moved into the middle of the main street, calling for the drunken insurgents to rally behind them. Their cries were all but lost in the din; the few who did hear them roared out slurred drinking songs and danced around on wobbly legs. Most of them, now drunk to the point of incapacitation, simply rolled about on the ground. Laïza, seizing a whip, tried vainly to lash the wretches to their senses, while Georges simply leaned on the iron bar he still held and looked on with the utmost contempt, silent and motionless as the statue of Disdain.
After a few moments it became clear to both Georges and Laïza that the situation was hopeless. Every minute now lost might represent a year of their lives. Spurred on by the conduct of the rest and lured by the scent of brandy, some of the men in Laïza’s own troop now broke ranks in search of their share of the drink. They had already wasted too much time; they needed to cut their losses and retreat. Already, they had lost too much.
Georges and Laïza reassembled the small number of men who remained sober and loyal to them; it amounted to barely three hundred. Positioning themselves in the front rank, they marched resolutely toward the end of the street, which, as I have said, was guarded by a wall of British troops. Moving closer, they could see that the soldiers’ muskets were aimed straight at them. A flash of light ran along the line of guns, and a hail of bullets fell on the rebels. A dozen men fell immediately, but the two leaders remained unhurt. Their joint cry of “Forward!” rang out, and they continued their advance; now a second burst of bullets killed even more blacks than the first—but now the distance between the two groups had closed, and hand-to-hand combat began.
It was a dreadful mêlée. British soldiers are well known for their tenacity, and they were fully prepared to die where they stood rather than giving way. However, they were now dealing with desperate rebels who, quite aware that execution would be their fate if captured, were determined to die as free men.
Georges and Laïza displayed miraculous courage; Laïza with a captured musket, which he held by the barrel and used like a club, and Georges with the iron bar he had taken from his prison window. Their men supported them wonderfully well, rushing on the British with bayonets in hand, while their wounded companions slashed away at the enemy with their knives.
After ten minutes of furious and bloody fighting, neither side had a marked advantage—but at last discouragement overcame discipline, and the English ranks broke like a ruptured dike, giving way to the flood of surviving rebels who surged away and fled into the woods and fields outside the town.
Georges and Laïza stayed at the rear of the group to ensure the retreat. When they reached the foot of Petite-Montagne, a spot too steep and thickly forested for the English soldiers to follow them, they finally called a halt. They stood with the remaining rebels, trying to catch their breath. There were but twenty men left with them; the others had either scattered or been killed in the battle. It was no longer a question of fighting, but only of finding a safe place in the woods to hide. Georges named Moka, the quarter in which his father’s house was located, as the rendezvous point for anyone who wished to join him. He would, he announced, leave the following morning at dawn for the area of Grand Port, home of the densest woods in île de France.
As he gave these final instructions to the pathetic remains of the troop with which he had, for a glorious moment, dreamed of conquering the island, the moon gleamed briefly down on them as it passed between the clouds. All at once, the flash and crack of musket fire echoed from a thicket about forty feet away from where Georges stood. A bullet struck him in the side, and he fell at Laïza’s feet. At the same instant the shadowy figure of a man could be seen fleeing from the bushes clutching a still-smoking rifle, disappearing into a small ravine behind them, and emerging to join the British soldiers grouped on the bank of the Pucelles stream.
Quick as the assassin had been, Laïza had been able to recognize him. As Georges slipped into unconsciousness, he heard Laïza murmur, with cold hatred, the name of Antonio the Malay.
XXIII
A FATHER’S HEART
During the various events at Port Louis that I have just recounted, Pierre Munier waited anxiously at Moka for news of the terrible destiny he had let his son go to meet. Accustomed to the whites’ eternal supremacy, as I have said, he considered this supremacy not only an acquired right, but a natural one as well. As much as he trusted Georges, he did not think it possible that the young man could overcome the insurmountable obstacles in his way.
From the moment Georges had departed, he had been in a state of despondence, his heart and mind so overcome with emotion that he appeared all but insensible to what was going on around him. Once or twice he even considered going to Port Louis himself, so that he might see what was happening there with his own eyes, but to march against such dreadful certitude requires a strength of will the poor father did not possess. If it had simply been a question of facing danger, Pierre Munier would have run to confront it.
The day dragged by with agonizing slowness, all the more painful because of his mental anguish and the fact that he dared tell no one, not even the faithful Télémaque, of the reasons for his despair. From time to time he rose from his chair and walked to the open window, gazing in the direction of the city and listening attentively—but he was invariably greeted with blank silence, and returned, sighing and vacant-eyed, to his seat.
The dinner hour came, and Télémaque set the table and served the food, but Pierre Munier seemed oblivious. The servant waited fifteen minutes, then approached his master and touched him lightly on the shoulder. Pierre Munier gave a great start and, rising from his chair, exclaimed, “What? Is there news?” Télémaque pointed to the table; the old man heaved a great sigh, smiled sadly, and returned to his reverie. It was obvious to the Negro that something extraordinary must be going on—the master had been behaving strangely all day—but he did not dare ask for an explanation. He rolled his big white-rimmed eyes around the room, but everything seemed calm and orderly. All he knew was that something dreadful had befallen the Munier household.
The rest of the day progressed in this manner.
Télémaque left the food on the table, hoping that hunger would assert itself, but Pierre Munier did not eat. Once, seeing drops of perspiration on the old man’s forehead, Télémaque thought his master must be too warm, and offered him a glass of watered wine. Pierre Munier took it, but set it aside immediately and asked again if the servant had heard any news. Télémaque could only shake his head and gaze in confusion at the ceiling and the floor. Finally—since neither yielded any answers—he departed in search of the other blacks who served as the household staff—perhaps they would understand the cause of the master’s uneasiness better than he.
To Télémaque’s utter astonishment, however, except for himself there was not a single Negro to be found in the house. The barn, where the berloque habitually took place, was likewise deserted; the slave cabins were occupied only by women and children, who told him that as soon as the day’s work was over the men had taken up weapons in lieu of resting, and had set off in groups toward the rivière des Lataniers.
Télémaque returned to the house in consternation. When he closed the door behind him, Pierre Munier turned quickly at the sound. “Well?” he demanded. The servant relayed what he had been told of the other Negroes’ actions, and the old man groaned. “Yes; alas!”
There could no longer be any doubt. The poor father knew his son’s fate would be decided very soon—if, indeed, it had not been already. Ever since Georges’s return, Pierre Munier had bound up his life so closely with that of his son, so handsome and brave, so self-confident, so full of the past and sure of the future, that he had come to feel almost as if they shared a life. He knew that he could not survive without his boy.
How bitterly the old man reproached himself for letting Georges go that morning without asking questions and learning his deepe
st thoughts, without determining exactly how much danger the young man would be in! How he regretted not insisting on going with him! But the idea of his son doing open battle with the whites, who had always been so invincible, had rendered him morally powerless. It was, as I have said, in the nature of this naïve soul to cower in the face of all but physical danger.
Night fell. The hours ticked by without any news of Georges. Ten o’clock struck; eleven o’clock; midnight. The darkness outside was impenetrable, yet Pierre Munier did not cease his endless trips from the armchair to the window, and all the lamps in the house remained brightly lit. Télémaque, now really concerned, had resolved to keep his master company—but his devotion could not overcome his fatigue, and he finally fell asleep in his chair, leaning against the wall where his silhouette was outlined like a charcoal drawing.
At two o’clock the watchdog who normally prowled the grounds at night but had been chained in view of the situation let out a low and plaintive howl. Pierre Munier started and rose from his seat, trembling. Among blacks, the howl of a dog is considered the harbinger of dreadful misfortune. The old man felt his strength desert him. He clung to the edge of a table to keep from falling.
Five minutes later the dog howled again, and in another five minutes he did yet again—each time louder, longer, and more mournful than the last. Pierre Munier stood, speechless and paralyzed with fear. His face was white, and drops of perspiration shone on his forehead. He stared at the door, knowing it might open at any moment and dreading the bad news he feared would arrive when it did.
Only a few moments had passed before the footsteps of a large number of people could be heard approaching the door. To the poor father, the steps seemed horribly slow and measured, as if they might be following a bier. The next instant the foyer was filled with people—though they were oddly quiet. In the midst of this thick silence Pierre Munier heard a faint moan, and thought he recognized the voice of his son.
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