Читать книгу The Gold Brick - Ann S. Stephens - Страница 6

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In France, the awful strife of the Revolution had sprung out of oppressions heaped by one class upon another, from century to century, until the people began to comprehend the powers that lay in mere physical strength, and hurled themselves in a phrensy of hate on their oppressors. But even Paris, whose awful example had run like wildfire all over France and its dependencies, plunged into its carnival of blood with far less ferocity than marked this outbreak of Negroes in St. Domingo. In Paris, it was an upheaving of classes, marked and established by men of kindred blood, and born to the same soil. A struggle of men clamorous for their birthright of freedom, which they were determined to wrest from the strong hand of power.

Ages of oppression could not be hurled off thus suddenly, without horrible carnage. But there, it was the people against a government—white men struggling against white men. In a mighty effort to upheave the foundations of despotism, the people grew mad. In their ardor for liberty, and in the ignorance of her very visage, they trampled her in the dust, setting up red handed murder in her place, dealing death on every hand, as they hurled themselves with mighty force on their oppressors and trampled upon them with that ferocious hate continual wrongs will ever engender. But in the hot tropics, this struggle became a war of races, the most fierce, terrible, and relentless that humanity has yet known. It became a war of blacks against whites. Slaves against their masters. Where hate and ignorance hurled their massive strength against luxurious refinement. The brightest features of this horrible struggle were the murders that gave Paris so many blood red pages in history, pages that all her after greatness and glory will never have power to wash white.

The massacre of St. Domingo was one of intense hate. The black slave, brutalized by the chains he wore, stood on every hearthstone ready for revenge on his white master. That which followed was not merely a massacre but a hurried carnival of ruin, a riot of awful passions, of atrocities for which there is no language, and from which the imagination revolts with sickening inability of comprehension.

Of all the horrors perpetrated in the French Revolution, which was one great horror in itself, that of St. Domingo was the most brutal the most demoniac. And such a war of races—a war between white men and negroes must ever be. With the despotism of long established power, luxurious ease, and pampered intelligence, opposed to the hot blood of Africa, scarcely subdued from its first savage state, fired by the memory of slave ships, chains, starvation, barter, and above all, the wild freedom which preceded these wrongs, who can wonder at the scenes which made that lovely island a purgatory of crime.

But these scenes no human being can ever describe. It would require a pen of adamant and the heart of a fiend to depict a single act of that fearful outbreak.

All the night, and deep into the sweet rosiness of the morning the terrible strife raged on in that doomed city. But in the broad day these black savages began to retreat from their ghastly orgies, and, for a time, the delirium of murder waned from its climax. The thirst for rapine slackened to a degree, and the monsters who had found this ferocious pastime full of intoxication, grew sluggish like wild beasts satiated with blood.

Some of these wretches lay down in the public streets, and fell asleep in the hot sun; others huddled together in torpid masses and sunk into stupor, dreaming of coming nights, which should give them a new riot of blood and fire. Stumbling over these, fierce crowds of untired demons kept on their work, stabbing right and left in brutal wantonness, for a lack of victims, and sickening the air with boasts of hideous acts performed in the night, and which another night should witness. Never on this earth had a scene more revolting presented itself to the beautiful sunshine.

But human nature is not all vile, and even among those ignorant, ill-used blacks, germs of compassion, tenderness, and good faith are found, redeeming, in a degree, the harrowing cruelties of the many. Among these good men—good in spite of ignorance and wrong endured—was the black man Jube. If ever faithfulness, natural feeling, and a simple sense of honor, dwelt in a human being, these feelings throve in the broad, cloudy bosom of the slave, and many another household servant became a household saviour in that cruel time.

While his little master was wrapped in the deep slumber which follows exhaustion, the negro had besought permission to go on shore and search for his master. Captain Mason, in his generous pity of the poor fellow, sent the boat back to the place it had reached the night before, to lie in wait for the negro while he searched around the palm trees and the neighboring chaparral for some traces of the noble master who had won his whole savage heart by great kindness.

The men who waited in the boat saw him wandering along the shore in a dejected attitude, for a long time. At last he came near a great spreading aloe, whose broad under leaves were half buried in the sand. Those who watched, heard a low, wailing cry, and saw the negro fall upon his knees, and rock to and fro in an agony of grief over some object concealed behind the aloe.

"He's found something that's cut him down like grape shot," said one of the sailors, flinging a quid of tobacco, which he had just cut for himself, back into his box, and closing it softly.

"Such a scream as that is enough to take a man off his tobacco for a month," answered another tar, taking off his tarpaulin, and wiping his bald head with the sleeve of his jacket.

"Supposen we pull in and see what it is?" said Rice.

"No; the captain told us not to go ashore. Some of them tarnal niggers 'ed get hold of the boat, spite of us," answered the old tar.

"But we'll row up into shallow water, and one of us can go see what's the matter, and the rest 'ell take care of the cutter. Every thing seems to be still along there, not a nigger in sight," answered Rice, who commanded the boat.

The boat was urged into water so shallow that one of the sailors rolled up his duck trousers and stepped in, wading easily ashore. With a long, rolling step he swung himself forward up the beach, and soon found Jube on his knees by the body of a dead man, who lay in the gaunt shadow of the aloe, pierced through the heart, with a spear broken short in the wound.

Jube looked up, his black face wet with tears, his great hands clasped and pressed downward in the sand.

"It is him. Me has found the master," he said in broken English. "Cold! cold! oh, so dead!"

The sailor looked down into the calm, aristocratic face of the dead patrician—for such the man evidently was—no marble could ever have been more finely cut, or coldly pale than those features. But for the masses of glossy hair and the black eyes, that remained partly open, the idea of some perfect specimen of sculpture would have been complete.

Jube unclasped his great hands, and with a reverential touch attempted to close the eyes.

"It's of no sorts of use," said the sailor, "you poor heathen nigger you. It ain't possible to shut them eyes now; they'll stay wide awake till the judgment day. All we can do is to dig a trench here, close by this thing with the notched leaves, and lay him in. Come, bear a hand, and I'll help you, if you are black; this ain't no time to be perticular, besides I've kinder took a notion to you, anyhow."

Jube did not comprehend many of the words, but he understood the gestures, and went to work, raining great tears on the sand as he scraped it up.

The sailor fell to, and worked vigorously, comforting the negro, in his rough way, all the time. At last a trench of some depth was dug, and the sailor bade Jube help him lift the body into its poor resting-place. Then Jube began to sob, and tremble through all his massive frame, but he obeyed meekly. The garments upon the body were rich and of value. That sailor only got ten dollars a month for his hard labor, but he never thought of taking a fragment of those rich clothes, nor attempted to examine the pockets, though a clink of gold, as they lifted the body, told him that what might have been wealth to him was there. As for Jube, poor fellow, he scarcely knew what money meant, and if he had, would have guarded that about his master's person with his life.

So they lifted that proud and noble man from the red sand where he had been murdered, and laid him in the best grave they had the power to make. Jube tore away one of the great aloe leaves, and laid it over the white face, moaning like a wounded creature, as he shut it out from his own sight; but he shook so violently, that the sailor, with rough kindness, bade him go away, while he filled in the grave, and evened the sand. So Jube sat down in the shade of the aloe, and covering his face with his hands, sat still waiting.

When that boat neared the vessel, Jube saw his young master leaning over the bulwarks, and watching it with longing impatience.

"Jube, oh, Jube! why did they not come? I thought they would both be with you!" he cried, in a voice of keen disappointment. "Come up, come up, and tell me; the time has seemed so long."

Jube climbed up the rope ladder very slowly, with his black face bent toward the water. At last he stood on the deck, his heavy shoulders drooping, his eyes cast down, and his great bare feet trembling on the boards they pressed.

"Jube, Jube! tell me where they are? Why did mamma go away, and not call me? It wasn't kind, Jube."

"Mistress always kind, very kind, little master," stammered Jube, trying hard to control the tremulous motion that contracted his heavy lips.

"But where? Is she with papa?"

"Yes, little master. She—she is with papa, sure."

"Jube, did they both go home and leave me?" questioned the child, with tears in his eyes. "Did they, Jube?"

"No, little master, they didn't do that; how could they?"

"Well, then, where are they?"

"Not in the old home, be sure, not there; bad slaves, bad negro there."

"But are they safe?"

"Yes; safe."

"On shore?"

"Yes, little master, safe on the shore."

"But when will they come after us, Jube? I do so want to see them. Mamma was so tired she couldn't say good-night, and papa—I feel very, very unhappy about papa; he never left me so long before."

"But he couldn't help it, little master; sure he couldn't."

"I know that. Of course he couldn't; but, oh! when will he come? Jube, Jube, my heart aches so!"

"Jube's heart aches, too."

"Does it, Jube, like mine—heavy, heavy; and when I ask you about them, it aches worse? Dear old Jube, I won't do it. You shall see how bravely I can wait."

The child took one of Jube's hard hands in his, as he spoke, and led the negro away.

"Why, how you shake, Jube! What for? I never felt you shake so before!" he said, laying his other delicate hand caressingly over that of the black man's.

"Jube helped row the boat, little master, and it is hard work."

"But you are so strong, Jube; strong as a lion, and as brave; papa said so."

"Did he say that, little master; did he?"

"There, you are shaking again! Sit down, Jube. Don't be afraid; I won't ask any thing. There, lean your head against the mast; I will watch for them while you rest."

"No, don't watch. They won't come yet—not yet."

"Not before night, perhaps."

Jube closed his eyes heavily, and groaned.

It was mournful—the sight of that strange child, sitting upon Jube's knee and watching the shore with a trusting, earnest hope that his father and mother would seek him over the water where she had fallen asleep and floated away, but would be sure to come back when papa was found. The child said this a hundred times, as he patted the hard palm of the slave with his little hand, while Jube answered bravely, each time, "Oh, yes, Master Paul, sometime they shall see us again. That's what the captain was saying to me just now. I hope it's true, little master; for your sake I hope he knows."

When he had done speaking, Jube would turn his head quite away, and shake the tears from his eyes, while the boy fell to his patient watch again.