e prisoner saw no one. Again and again he
caught the voices of his children, singing upon deck--no doubt in order
to communicate with him: but, in every instance, almost before he had
begun to listen, the song ceased. Mars Plaisir explained that it was
silenced by the captain's order. No captain's order had power to stop
the prisoner's singing. Every night was Aimee consoled, amidst her
weeping, by the solemn air of her father's favourite Latin Hymn to Our
Lady of the Sea: every morning was Margot roused to hope by her
husband's voice, singing his matin-prayer. Whatever might be the
captain's apprehensions of political danger from these exercises, he
gave over the opposition which had succeeded so well with the women.

"My father crossed this sea," thought Toussaint: "and little could he
have dreamed that the next of his race would cross it also, a prince and
a prisoner. He, the son of a king, was seized and sold as a slave. His
son, raised to be a ruler by the hand of Him who creates princes
(whether by birth or royalty of soul), is kidnapped, and sacrificed to
the passions of a rival. Such is our life! But in its evil there is
good. If my father had not crossed this sea as a slave, Saint Domingo
would have wanted me; and in me, perhaps, its freedom and civilisation.
If I had not been kidnapped, my blacks might have lacked wrath to
accomplish the victory to which I have led them. If my father is
looking back on this world, I doubt not he rejoices in the degradation
which brought elevation to his race; and, as for me, I lay the few years
of my old age a ready sacrifice on the altar of Africa."

Sometimes he amused himself with the idea of surveying, at last, the
Paris of which he had heard so much. Oftener, however, he dwelt with
complacency on the prospect of seeing Bonaparte--of meeting his rival,
mind to mind. He knew that Bonaparte's curiosity about him was eager,
and he never doubted that he should be called to account personally for
his government, in all its details. He did not consider that the great
captain of the age might fear to meet his victim--might shrink from the
eye of a brother-soldier whom he had treated worse than a felon.

Time and disappointment taught the prisoner this. None of his dreams
were verified. In Brest harbour he was hurried from the ship--allowed a
parting embrace of his family upon deck--no more; not a sentence of
conversation, though all the ship's crew were by to hea