"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, hoofs2 ringing on the narrow macadam, swords clanking, and dark plumes3 nodding over set faces, while the distant war-signal from shell, reed, and horn called before, around, and after them.
Still later came a knock at the door, and Mr. Kenyon was warily5 readmitted. He explained the passing of the troopers. They had hurried about the country for hours, assembling their families at points easy to defend and then had come to the fort for ammunition6 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 militia7 were without ammunition also. He believed the fort's officers were conniving8 with the revolt. Presently he left us, saying he had met one of our freed servants, Jack9, 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 gallop11 of a single horse, and a Danish orderly, heavily armed, passed 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 swarming13 insurgents14. 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 hog15, poured in his blood, added gunpowder16, and drank the compound--to make them brave. Then with barrels of rum and sugar they changed a whole cistern17 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 hatchets18, hoes, cutlasses, and sugar-cane bills. The bills were fitted on stout19 pole handles, and all their weapons had been ground and polished until they glittered horridly20 in their black hands and above the gaudy21 Madras turbans or bare woolly heads and bloodshot eyes.
"Dem goin' to de fote to ax foo freedom," Jack cried.
At their head rode "Gin'ral Buddoe," large, powerful, black, in a cocked hat with a long white
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