x.x.x

(THE RISING CURTAIN)

In that year, 1848, this unrest was much increased. King Christian had lately proclaimed a gradual emanc.i.p.ation of all slaves in his West Indian colonies. A squad of soldiers had marched through the streets, halting at corners and beating a drum--"beating the protocol," as it was termed--and reading the royal edict. After twelve years all slaves were to go free; their owners were to be paid for them; and meantime every infant of a slave was to be free at birth.

I suppose no one knows better than the practical statesman how disastrous measures are apt to be when designed for the _gradual_ righting of a public evil. They rarely satisfy any cla.s.s concerned.

In this case the aged slaves bemoaned a promised land they might never live to enter; younger ones dreaded the superior liberty of free-born children; and the planters doubted they would be paid, even if emanc.i.p.ation did not bring fire, rapine, and death.

One day, along with all "West-En'," as the negroes called Fredericksted--Christiansted was "Ba.s.s-En',"--I saw two British East-Indiamen sail into the harbor. Such ships never touched at Fredericksted; what could the Britons want?

"Water," they said, "and rest"; but they stayed and stayed! their officers roaming the island, asking many questions, answering few.

What they signified at last I cannot say, except that they became our refuge from the black uprising that was near at hand. Likely enough that was their only errand.

Sunday, the 2d of July, was still and fair. To me the Sabbath was always a happy day. High-stepping horses prancing up to the church-gates brought friends from the plantations. The organ pealed, the choir chanted, the rector read, and read well; the mural tablets told the virtues of the churchyard sleepers, and out through the windows I could gaze on the clouds and the hills. After church came the Sunday-school. Its house was on a breezy height where the wind swept through the room unceasingly, giving wings to the children's voices as we sang, "Now be the gospel banner."

But this Sunday promised unusual pleasure. I was to go with Aunt Marion to dine soon after midday with a Danish family, in real Danish West Indian fashion, and among the guests were to be some officers of the East-Indiamen. I carried with me one fear--that we should have pigeon-pea soup. Whoever ate pigeon-pea soup, Si' Myra said, would never want to leave the island, and I longed for those ships to go.

But in due time we were asked:

"Which soup will you have--guava-berry or pigeon-pea?"

Hoping to be imitated I chose the guava-berry; but without any immediately visible effect one officer took one and another the other.

After soup came an elegant kingfish, and by and by the famous callalou and other delicate and curious viands. For dessert appeared "red groat"; sago jelly, that is, flavored with guavas, crimsoned with the juice of the p.r.i.c.kly-pear and floating in milk; also other floating islands of guava jelly beaten with eggs. Pale-green granadillas crowned the feast. These were eaten with sugar and wine, and before each draft the men lifted their gla.s.ses high to right and left and cried: "Skoal! Skoal!" As the company finally rose, our host and hostess shook hands with all, these again saluting each other, each two saying: "Vel be komme"--"May this feast do you good."

There was strange contrast in store for us. Late in the afternoon we started home. On the way two friends, a lady and her daughter, persuaded us to turn and take a walk on the north-side road, at the town's western border. It drew us southward toward "the lagoon," near to where this water formed a kind of moat behind the fort, and was spanned by a slight wooden bridge. While we went the sun slowly sank through a golden light toward the purple sea, among temples, towers, and altars of cloud.

As we neared this bridge two black men crossing it from opposite ways stopped and spoke low:

"Yes, me yerry it; dem say sich t'ing' as nebber bin known befo' goin'

be done in West-En' town to-night."

"Well, you look sharp, me frien'----"

Seeing us, they parted abruptly, one troubled, the other pleased and brisk. Our friends drew back: "What does he mean, mother?"

"Oh, some meeting to make Christmas songs, I suppose."

"I think not," said Aunt Marion. "Let's go back; my mother's alone."

Just then Gilbert, young son of an intimate neighbor, appeared, saying to the four of us: "I've come to find you and see you home. The thing's on us. The slaves rise to-night. Some free negroes have betrayed them. At eight o'clock they, the slaves, are to attack the town."

Our home was reached first. Grandmamma heard the news calmly. "We're in G.o.d's hands," she said. "Gilbert, will you stop at Mr. Kenyon's"

[another neighbor] "and send Anna and Marcia home?"

Mr. Kenyon came bringing them and begging that we all go and pa.s.s the night with him. But grandmamma thought we had better stay home, and he went away to propose to the neighborhood that all the women and children be put into the fort, that the men might be the freer to defend them.

"Marion," said grandmamma, "let us have supper and prayers."

The meal was scarcely touched. Aunt Marcia put Bible and prayer-book by the lamp and barred all the front shutters. When grandmamma had read we knelt, but the prayer, was scarcely finished when Aunt Marcia was up, crying: "The signal! Hear the signal!"

Out in the still night a high mournful note on a bamboo pipe was answered by a conch, and presently the alarm was ringing from point to point, from sh.e.l.ls, pipes and horns, and now and then in the solemn clangor of plantation bells. It came first from the south, then from the east, swept around to the north, and answered from the western cliffs, springing from hilltop to hilltop, long, fierce, exultant. We stood listening and, I fear, pale. But by and by grandmamma took her easy chair.

"I will spend the night here," she said.

Aunt Anna took a rocking-chair beside her. Aunt Marcia chose the sofa.

Aunt Marion spread a pallet for me, lay down at my side, and bade me not fear but sleep. And I slept.

x.x.xI

(REVOLT AND RIOT)

Suddenly I was broad awake. Distant but approaching, I heard horses'

feet. They came from the direction of the fort. Aunt Marcia was unbarring the shutters and fastening the inner jalousies so as to look out unseen.

"It's nearly one o'clock," some one said, and I got up, wondering how the world looked at such an hour. All hearkened to the nearing sound.

"Ah!" Aunt Marcia gladly cried, "the troopers!"

There were only some fifty of them. Slowly, in a fitful moonlight, they dimly came, hoofs ringing on the narrow macadam, swords clanking, and dark plumes nodding over set faces, while the distant war-signal from sh.e.l.l, reed, and horn called before, around, and after them.

Still later came a knock at the door, and Mr. Kenyon was warily readmitted. He explained the pa.s.sing of the troopers. They had hurried about the country for hours, a.s.sembling their families at points easy to defend and then had come to the fort for ammunition and orders; but the captain of the fort, refusing to admit them without the governor's order, urged them to go to their homes.

"But," Mr. Kenyon had interposed, "a courier can reach the governor in an hour and a half."

"One will be sent as soon as it is light," was the best answer that could be got.

Our friend, much excited, went on to tell us that the town militia were without ammunition also. He believed the fort's officers were conniving with the revolt. Presently he left us, saying he had met one of our freed servants, Jack, who would come soon to protect us.

Shortly after daybreak Jack did appear and mounted guard at the front gate. "Go sleep, ole mis's. Miss Mary Ann" [Marion], "you-all go sleep. Chaw! wha' foo all you set up all night? Si' Myra, you go draw watah foo bile coffee."

The dreadful signals had ceased at last, and all lay down to rest; but I remained awake and saw through the great seaward windows the wonderful dawn of the tropics flush over sky and ocean. But presently its heavenly silence was broken by the gallop of a single horse, and a Danish orderly, heavily armed, pa.s.sed the street-side windows, off at last for Christiansted.

Soon the conchs and horns began again. With them was blent now the tramp of many feet and the harsh voices of swarming insurgents. Their long silence was explained; they had been sharpening their weapons.

Their first act of violence was to break open a sugar storehouse. They mixed a barrel of sugar with one of rum, killed a hog, poured in his blood, added gunpowder, and drank the compound--to make them brave.

Then with barrels of rum and sugar they changed a whole cistern of water into punch, stirring it with their sharpened hoes, dipping it out with huge sugar-boiler ladles, and drinking themselves half blind.

Jack dashed in from the gate: "Oh, Miss Marcia, go look! dem a-comin'!

Gin'ral Buddoe at dem head on he w'ite hoss."

We ran to the jalousies. In the street, coming southward toward the fort, were full two thousand blacks. They walked and ran, the women with their skirts tied up in fighting trim, and all armed with hatchets, hoes, cutla.s.ses, and sugar-cane bills. The bills were fitted on stout pole handles, and all their weapons had been ground and polished until they glittered horridly in their black hands and above the gaudy Madras turbans or bare woolly heads and bloodshot eyes.

"Dem goin' to de fote to ax foo freedom," Jack cried.