ites; their ranks swelled
by crowds of scarred and desperate men who had nothing to lose but
life; and life with slavery was not so sweet as revenge. Everywhere
they applied the torch to the sugar-mills--those bastilles, consecrated
to the rites of the lash and to forced labor, dumb with fear--and to the
cane fields, watered with sweat and blood.

Toward morning crowds of whites came pouring into Cap Francois, pale,
terror-stricken, blood-stained. Men, women, and children found the day
of judgment was come: none knew what to do; all was confusion. The
signal-gun boomed through the darkness warning of danger, and every man
stood to his arms. The inhabitants of the city were paralyzed with fear.
They barred their doors and locked up their house-slaves. The only
living objects in the streets were a few soldiers marching to their
posts. Panic ruled the hour. The Assembly sat through the night. Touzard
was sent out to attack the negroes, but was driven back. Guns were
mounted, and the streets barricaded.

The morning dawned, and with the rising sun came rising courage. "It is
nothing," said some; "burn and hang a few negroes and all will go on as
before." The exasperation against the mulattoes, who were charged with
having fomented the rising, resulted in hatred, insult, bloodshed and
murder in and around Cap Francois; and a butchery was only stayed by the
vigorous opposition of the Governor. Whatever negroes were seized were
tortured and massacred. "Frequently," says Lacroix, "did the faithful
slave perish by the hands of an irritated master whose confidence he
sought."

The maddened negroes had tasted blood. They seized Mr. Blen, an officer
of police, nailed him alive to one of the gates of his plantation, and
chopped off his limbs with an axe.

M. Cardineau had two sons by a black woman. He had freed them and shown
them much kindness; but they belonged to the hated race, and they joined
the revolt. The father remonstrated, and offered them money. They took
his money and stabbed him to the heart. If they were bastards, who had
made them so? "One's pleasant vices often come home to roost." Horrors
were piled on horrors: white women were ravished and murdered; black
were broken on the wheel: whites were crucified; blacks were burned
alive: long pent-up hatreds were having their riot and revenge. M.
Odeluc was wrong, then! The slaves did _not_ seem to love their
masters. What could it mean?

Pork and bananas: slavery an