Next morning the hotel servants were kept busy for an hour carrying up many copper cans of hot water, so that the new arrivals could thoroughly cleanse themselves in hip baths. Two barbers were sent for and a mercer who brought with him a selection of ready-made garments. By midday the gentry of the party, if not fashionably dressed, were at least presentable, and the others had substituted clean tropical attire for their flea-infested clothes.
At two o'clock Mansfield arrived to carry Roger, Wilson, Fergusson and the three ladies up to the fortress to dine with its commandant, Colonel Seaton. He proved to be a dour, elderly Scot, who had made his way in the Army by conscientious, if not enlightened, endeavour. It was at once clear to them that he was no courtier, but shrewd enough to realize that the goodwill of such influential people as the Governor-designate of Martinique and the Countess of St. Ermins might one day stand him in good stead. Having commiserated with them on their misfortunes he expressed his willingness to help them in any way he could.
They thanked him in no measured terms for having rescued them by agreeing to an exchange of prisoners, and for his other courtesies; after which Roger reimbursed him for his loan with a draft on Hoare's Bank, and said that they would all like to go to Jamaica as soon as a passage could be arranged. He told them that as his communications with Kingston were frequent he thought there should be nothing to prevent their leaving in the next few days. They then went in to dinner.
It proved an indifferent and far from cheerful meal. Although the Colonel spoke guardedly, it was clear that he felt a bitter resentment against the powers at home who showed a most lamentable lack of understanding about the problems and needs of troops campaigning in the West Indies, and that he was greatly depressed by the heavy toll that death from Yellow Fever was taking of his men.
Recalling Droopy Ned's advice, Roger suggested that he should send the greater part of them to sea for a short voyage; but he seemed pessimistic about such a step having results of permanent value, and said that in any case his numbers were so reduced that he could not possibly do so without risking the security of the Fortress.
They finished dinner about seven, upon which the ladies retired to the drawing-room while the men sat over their port An hour later they joined the ladies and soon afterwards Georgina initiated the polite movements for making their adieux. At this the Colonel expressed unfeigned surprise, reminding them that it was New Year's Eve, and saying that his officers were greatly looking forward to welcoming them in the mess to celebrate seeing the old year out
In their complete absorption with their freedom they had completely forgotten the date, and although they would rather have once more savoured the joy of getting between clean sheets at the hotel, politeness demanded that they should now stay on where they were. As none of them had any acquaintances in common with the Colonel, and he did not know enough about Saint-Domingue to be interesting on that subject, the conversation was kept up only by gallant efforts on the part of the visitors. But at last it struck ten o'clock and he led them through several chilly stone passages to the Officers' Mess.
As British women were as rare at Mole St. Nicholas as flies in December at home, the thirty-odd officers assembled there greeted Georgina, Amanda and Clarissa with a tremendous ovation. But they had been through too much too recently to meet it with a genuine response. They did their best to show their appreciation of the many gallant toasts drunk to them, and did their utmost to disguise the accumulated weariness from which they were still suffering, but they, and Roger, Fergusson and Wilson too, were heartily glad when the New Year of 1795 had been ushered in with the singing of 'Auld Lang Syne', and they were at last free to take their departure.
Next day, after sleeping late and the luxury or another bath, Roger felt much more like his old self and having found out where Madame de Boucicault was living, he performed the sad duty of waiting upon her with the news of her husband's death. Then, on returning to the hotel, as he had nothing to do, he decided that it would be interesting to learn the views of a rich bourgeois on possible developments in Saint-Domingue. Accordingly, he sought out Monsieur Ducas and suggested that the landlord should join him in a bottle of wine.
Murmuring his appreciation of the honour 'Son Excellence le Gouverneu’ proposed to do him, the hotelier led Roger to his private sanctum and sent for a bottle of his best Chateauneuf-du-Pape. Soon, as Roger's French was so perfect, he kept forgetting that he was talking to an Englishman and in response to skilful leading questions began to give free rein to his beliefs.
He was a loyal Frenchman. In Saint-Domingue, just as in France, the nobility had been stupid, greedy and overbearing; so to begin with he had been all in favour of the Revolution which promised to pull them down a peg or two. But somehow everything had gone wrong. In Paris the demagogues had abandoned God and murdered their king. Then they had seized upon the discord in the colonies to further their criminal designs against all owners of property. To save themselves from wholesale massacres the colonists had been forced to call in the English. What else could they do? Yet France would in time become sane again, and Samt-Domingue was almost as much a part of her as Provence. So in due course it must be restored to the mother country. There would be difficulties, of course. But it was to be hoped that the British would see the obvious necessity for this.
The great tragedy was, he added, that there a moderate Revolution could quite well have been effected without bloodshed. That it had been otherwise was due to the mulattoes. It was they who had first taken up arms, and had they not done so the negroes would never have followed their example.
"I thought," remarked Roger, "that the mulattoes had played only for their own hand, because they realized that while liberal sentiment in pre-revolutionary France might gain for them equal rights with the whites, there could be no question of such rights being granted to the negroes."
"That is true, Monseigneur. And, of course, many of the wealthier mulattoes were slave owners themselves. But once a country becomes divided against itself in civil war, who can say where the conflagration will stop? It was seeing the white planters murdered and their houses plundered that inflamed the minds of the negroes. But for that, the windy orations of the Terrorists sent out from Paris would in most cases have fallen on deaf ears. The slaves did not then understand what freedom meant, or want it They were in the main quite contented with their lot"
"You surprise me. Are you really convinced of that?"
"Indeed I am. When in France you must have seen how the peasants toil in the fields from dawn to dusk, and turn their women too into beasts of burden. It is the same in Italy and most other European countries; yet these people are free. The negroes were no worse off while working here in the cane-brakes."
It was a new point of view to Roger. He remembered an occasion when he had breakfasted with Mr. Pitt The Prime Minister's great friend William Wilberforce had been present, and had talked at considerable length on the horrors of the slave trade. Now, he repeated some of the statements Wilberforce had made to Monsieur Ducas.
The Frenchman shrugged. "I do not deny that the conditions under which fresh cargoes of slaves are brought over from Africa -are often appalling, and that many of them die from sickness or ill-treatment on the voyage. For that, Monseigneur I fear that your countrymen are mostly to blame, since 'blackbirding', as it is called, has long been one of the most profitable fields of British enterprise. I spoke only of the condition of the slaves either born here or once they have been purchased by our colonists.