and it?"

"You declare your allegiance to France, declaring, at the same time, its
limits, and appealing to your soldiers, in the event of aggression. It
is plain from this that you mean to defend yourself, and anticipate
war."

"It is well. That is what I intend to convey. You will publish this
proclamation, in your city and district, under the date of this 18th of
December, 1801. You will then concert with General Clerveaux the
measures for the defence of this city, and report your decisions to me,
on my return from Cap Samana. Shall it be so, brother?"

"Be it so."

"And we are friends?"

"We are fellow-citizens--we are Ouvertures--and therefore faithful. I
shall not betray you."

"That is all I can ask, I know. We are old men, Paul. Fidelity for a
while! Beyond the grave, perhaps more."

"You are going already?"

"To Cap Samana; and alone. Farewell!"

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN.

ALL EYE.

Day by day, in the internals of his occupation about the defence of the
colony, did Toussaint repair to Cap Samana, to look eastwards over the
sea. Day by day was he more sure, from the information that reached
him, that the French could not be far-off. At length, he desired that
his generals should be within call from Cotuy, a small town which stood
on the banks of the Cotuy, near the western base of the mountainous
promontory of Samana--promontory at low water, island at high tide.

All was yet dark on the eastern point of this mountain, on the morning
of the 28th of December, when two watchmen, who had passed the night
under the ferns in a cleft of the steep, came out to look abroad. On
their mountain all was yet dark, for the stars overhead, though still
rolling clear and golden--visible orbs in the empty depths of the sky--
were so far dimmed by the dawn in the east as no longer to send down
their shafts of light upon the earth. The point on which these watchmen
stood was so high, that between them and the horizon the sea lay like
half a world--an immeasurable expanse, spreading as if from a vast depth
below up into the very sky. Dim and soundless lay the mass of waters--
breaking, no doubt, as for ages past, against the rocky precipice below;
but not so as to be heard upon the steep. If might have appeared dead,
but that a ray from some quarter of the heaven, capriciously touching
its surface, showed that it was heaving as was its wont. Eastwards, at
the point of junction of sea and sky, a dusk