"It is a risk I have long run; and as the blacks have very few mounted men, even were the house surrounded, the odds are that by taking to horse I should manage to break through and escape."
Roger made a half rueful, half comic, grimace. "Until my wound is fully healed I fear that I should be in no case to do likewise."
"I trust, Monsieur le Gouverneur does not suggest that I would leave him to be murdered by these wretches," retorted de Boucicault with a sudden stiffening of his manner.
"I was but joking," Roger hastened to assure him. "It was a stupid remark, as I have no doubt whatever that you would do your utmost to save me."
"And I have little doubt that I should succeed. But to undertake the getting away of four helpless females at the same time might well prove beyond my capabilities. It was for that very reason that long ago I sent my own wife and daughters away to live at Mole St. Nicholas."
"It must be very lonely for you living here without them. As you are in no situation to protect your property I wonder that you continue to do so."
"Ah, but I can protect my property! To some extent at least. And as it constitutes almost my entire fortune, the inducement to stay on in the hope of better times far outweighs the attractions of safety with my family at the price of permanent beggary."
"The estate would remain yours."
"That is true; but the slaves who worked it have gradually drifted away, and ever since the Boukman revolt my plantations have become more and more derelict. In the tropics it needs only a few years of neglect for fields of coffee, cotton, cacao and sugar-cane to be swallowed up by the jungle. Mine would now be of little value. But I still have the house, with its stables and a great range of outbuildings equipped for handling the produce of the estate. They are the nucleus of the property and my sole hope of preserving them lies in staying on here."
"Since your house servants appear to have remained loyal to you, could you not have left them in charge. In the event of a determined ~ attack, whoever was occupying the place would be compelled to abandon, it anyhow, and they would run far less risk of being maltreated by other negroes than would you."
De Boucicault shook his head. "If you are to govern the island of Martinique successfully, my friend, you will do well to learn something, about the negro mentality; for there, too, their status has now become a problem, and will require skilful handling. In spite of what I have told you of the excesses they have committed here you must not suppose that they are all evil and sadistic by nature. It is simply that their minds are much more childlike than ours. Few of them have as. yet developed any reasoning powers, so they react swiftly to every primitive impulse of the moment, and are easily led by stronger personalities, for either good or ill. Normally, they respond to kindness as readily as those, of us who have been blessed with white skins; and during the terrible week of the initial revolt I and my family owed our lives to the fact that we had always treated our slaves as human beings. They protected us and refused to allow the revolted slaves from neighbouring plantations to set fire to the house.
"Yet the crux of the matter is that they took that stand only because we were present, and could exert a stronger influence on them than could comparative strangers whom they had no reason to regard as in any way superior to themselves. Had we been absent they would almost certainly have joined the insurgents and gleefully participated in the atrocities committed by others of their race.
"'Tis, of course, because I was little more than a cipher to the majority of my estate slaves that most of them were suborned by tales of easy plunder and ran away believing that the country was about to become a black man's paradise. The house slaves, on the other hand, considered themselves to be well off where they were, and I was in a position to counter any idea that by becoming outlaws they would enter into a Utopia. Nevertheless, did I depart, their minds would become fluid and subject to the first plausible rogue who sought to induce them to abandon their trust.
"Probably they would at first refrain from plundering my belongings; but were they confident that I did not intend to return until the disturbances were over they would not prevent their relatives from doing so, and soon they would persuade themselves that they were behaving stupidly in letting others get away with all the loot. Within a few weeks the house would be as bare as if it were a mule's carcass that had been picked clean by vultures, yet would be crammed to capacity with negroes of both sexes and all ages.
"That is what has happened to all the big houses in the interior. They have been stripped even to the door-knobs, and become reeking tenements which are best described by the term human ant-heaps. Banisters, cupboards and everything burnable in them is used to light fires because the inmates are too lazy to go out and collect more wood than they have to in the forests. The roofs may leak, the plaster crack, the paint peel from the walls and the floors become charred from the several cooking fires that are lit by different families daily in every room. It is no one's responsibility to maintain or repair the structures, and if their owners ever regain these places they will find that the gracious homes they left have become smoke-begrimed barren shells. That is what would happen here if I went to live in Mole St. Nicholas."
"I see your point." Roger smiled. "All the same I marvel that during all these years of strife you have not been driven out."
"I should have been on several occasions had I not taken precautions against being caught off my guard."
"Such as?" prompted Roger.
"In half a dozen places along a semi-circle, from coast to coast, running roughly five miles distant, I have negroes living who would give me warning of the approach of any hostile body. In this case it is no question of counting on their loyalty but on their greed. I pay each of them a monthly wage for doing nothing, which of course would cease if I were driven out, and any of them who brings me a timely warning knows that he will receive enough money to keep him in idleness for five years."
"That sounds an excellent system, but no warning could prevent an ill-intentioned rabble advancing on the house."
"On receiving one I let loose the dogs."
Roger raised his eyebrows. "Your three dogs might drive off a few unarmed men, as was the case with Doctor Fergusson and my man Dan Izzard two nights ago, but they could do little against a mob bent on plunder."
With a hearty laugh de Boucicault replied: "You are right in that, but I was referring to my pack. It consists of well over a hundred wild dogs: fierce mastiffs each capable of savaging a man to death. Many of the revolted slaves have shown great courage in battle, but experience has proved that these bands of marauders have no stomach for a conflict with my four-legged troops."
"If they are wild I should have thought they would have bolted when released, instead of remaining to attack your enemies."
"They are wild by breed but tamed to the extent that I have trained them for their work. I keep them in a big courtyard beyond the stables and no one other than myself ever enters it. As you no doubt know, the negro has a distinctive smell quite unlike that of a white man. I keep the dogs somewhat underfed and from time to time I wrap a chunk of the pig meat on which I feed them in an old garment that a negro has saturated with his sweat. In that way they have come to associate food with the negro smell. One of my slaves once ignored my order and entered the yard behind me. Before I could lift a hand to help him the poor devil was torn to pieces."
"You have certainly evolved a most ingenious means of defence," Roger commented. "But how did you manage to collect so many wild dogs in the firstplace?"
"That was not difficult. The forests of the island are infested with them. During the first century after its discovery the Spaniards endeavoured to force the Indians they found here into slavery, but they proved a difficult people. Neither good treatment nor the infliction of the most cruel punishments would induce those they captured to work; while those who continued free waged a bitter unrelenting war against the white settlers.