Francis Rolt-Wheeler

“ Pierre!
Above the pier but one street had been partly restored, and, at every gap, the boy's gaze encountered gray ruins. The ash, poured out by the mountain in its vast upheaval, has made a rich soil. To Stuart's eyes, the town was a town of dreams, of great stone staircases that led to nowhere, of high archways that gave upon a waste. The entrance hall of the great Cathedral, once one of the finest in the West Indies, still leads to the high altar, but that finds its home in a little wooden structure with a tin roof, shrinking in what was once a corner of the apse. ”

“ Cubans did not make Cuba a republic, Americans made Cuba a republic and then abandoned us. Of course, confusion followed. And in the revolution of 1906 and other revolutions, the Americans meddled, and yet did nothing. It is idle to deny that American influence is strong here! But what does it amount to? We are neither really free, nor really possessed."
"But what do you want?" queried Stuart. "I don't seem to understand. You don't want to be a possession of Spain, you don't want to be an American colony, and you don't want to be a republic. What do you want?" ”

“ Stuart's part in the adventure was outwardly simple. No one thought it worth while to question him, and he accompanied the Cuban as a guide and horse-boy.
Although the road improved as the higher land was reached, it was dusk when the two riders arrived at the foothills around Millot.
Dark fell quickly, and, with the dark, came a low palpitating rumble, that distant throbbing of sound, that malevolent vibrance which gives to every Haitian moonlit night an oppression and a fear all its own. ”

“ At times more than a hundred merchant vessels could be seen swinging to their anchors in the roadstead. A mushroom town appeared as by magic. Warehouses rose by scores. The beach was hidden by piles of boxes, bags and bales for which no storeroom could be found. Merchants came from all ports, especially the Jews and Levantines, who, since the beginning of time, have been the trade-rovers of the sea. Neither by day nor by night did the Babel of commerce cease. Unlike other West Indian towns, where such a condition led to gaiety and pleasure, Fort Oranje retained its Dutch character. ”

“ In the flash of a second, Stuart understood Manuel's plot. It was the Cuban who had provoked the negro to draw his weapon, counting on the boy's shooting his supposed enemy, as had been agreed upon. Then Manuel would drag him out of his hiding-place and kill him for an eavesdropper. He crouched, motionless, and watched.
"Sit down, and put up your weapons," continued Cecil, his voice still tense enough to be heard clearly. "This is childishness. Our plans need all three of us. It will be time enough to quarrel when we come to divide the spoils. First, the spoils must be won." ”

“ Thanks to Dinville's exact instructions, Stuart found the newspaper office without difficulty. The minute he stepped out of the elevator and on the floor, a driving expectancy possessed him. The disorderliness, the sense of tension, the combination of patient waiting and driving speed, the distant and yet perceptible smell of type metal and printers' ink, in short, the atmosphere of a newspaper, struck him with a sense of desire. ”

“ For many days Stuart lay in an alternation of fever and stupor, tormented by dreams in which visions of the red land-crabs played a terrible part, but youth and clean living were on his side, and he passed the crisis. Thereafter, in the equable climate of Barbados—one of the most healthful of the West Indies Islands—his strength began to return. ”

“ I told you, on the way over here, that Trinidad is reckoned one of the most prosperous islands of the West Indies—though it really belongs more to the coast of South America than it does to the Antilles—but, if you stop to think for a moment, you'll see that the prosperity of Trinidad is due to the fact that it has a warm, moist, even climate all the year round. That's fine for cocoa and coco-nuts, but it's not good for humans. The warm moist air of Trinidad is deuced enervating. No, let me go back to Barbados. ”

“ To Stuart's eyes, coffee was everywhere. The carts were loaded with coffee, the sacks the negroes carried were coffee-sacks, the shining green berries were exposed to dry on stretches of sailcloth in vacant lots, among the ruins on the sides of the streets. Haitian coffee is among the best in the world, but the Haitian tax is so high that the product cannot be marketed cheaply, the American public will not pay the high prices it commands, and nearly all the crop is shipped to Europe. ”

“ There was a market for all booty and every article—even captured white people for slaves—was exposed for sale. An adventurer could engage a crew of cut-throats at half-an-hour's notice. A plot to murder a thousand people in cold blood would be but street talk. Every crime which could be imagined by a depraved and gore-heated brain was of daily occurrence. It was a sink of iniquity.
"After France had taken possession of Tortugas, it came about quite naturally that the French buccaneers found themselves better treated in that port than the English filibusters or the Dutch Sea-Rovers. ”

“ Everything movable from the interior has been looted. Trees grow outward from the upper windows, and, in the cracks of masonry and marble floors, a tropic vegetation has sprung up. Moss covers the mosaics, and the carved woodwork has become the prey of the worm.
A little further on, at a hut which the General had described, Manuel and Stuart left their horses, and then began the steep climb up La Ferrière. From the steaming heat of the plain below, the climbers passed into the region of cold. ”

“ Kitts had been savagely slaughtered. These outrages prompted reprisals from the English and the French and thus the privateers came into the field."
"What's a privateer?" queried Stuart.
"I was just about to tell you," answered Cecil. "A privateer on the Caribbean and the Spanish Main, in those days, was a man who had sufficient money or sufficient reputation to secure a ship and a crew with which to wage war against the enemies of his country. As his own government had given nothing but permission to his venture, it gained nothing but glory from it. ”

“ The thought of poison had flashed into Stuart's mind. After all, the Englishman was just as much one of the conspirators as Manuel or Leborge, and might be just as anxious for the death of an eavesdropper. At the same time, the boy realized that he was absolutely in the Englishman's power, and that if Cecil wanted to get rid of him, there, in that thick forest, he had ample opportunity. To refuse the pellets might be even more dangerous than to accept them. ”

“ Stuart made no reply.
But this ironic fencing was not to Leborge's taste. He broke in, abruptly,
"You spy on us once, Yes! You spy on us again, Yes! You spy no more, No!"
He made a rough gesture, at which one of the Cacos dashed upon the boy, pinned his arms to his sides and harshly, but deftly, tied him securely with a rope. This done, the Haitian took the boy's small revolver from his pocket and cast it contemptuously on the ground.
"The white carries a pistol, Yes! But he does not even know how to shoot it!" ”

“ Dessalines and Christophe, monsters of brutality, [Pg 59] are the heroes of Haiti, because they massacred everyone who was not coal-black.
Manuel cast a sidelong glance at Stuart, smiling inwardly at the boy's attempt to maintain his disguise, that disguise which the Cuban had so quickly pierced, and shrugged his shoulders.
"What would you!" he rejoined. "You see yourself, it is the only government that Haitians understand. To this day, a century later, this part of the island is better than the south, because of the impress of the reign of Christophe. Nothing changes Haiti!" ”

“ The moss is waist-high, the ferns wave twenty feet overhead, the bamboo drapes a feathery fringe by every stream, the cocoa trees grow right up to the road or railroad which sweeps along as on an avenue between them, while at every crossing the white roadway is lined by the majestic sentinels of plantain, coco-nut palm and breadfruit tree. ”

“ For the land tax, Senor, is not all! Nearly all the money that the government spends—that the Rats waste—comes from the tax on imports. No grain is grown in Cuba, and there is no clothing industry. All our food and all our clothes are [Pg 109] imported, and it is the guarijo who, at the last, must pay that tax. Young Senor, did you know that, per head of population, the poor Cuban is taxed for the necessities of life imported into this island three and a half times as much as the rich American is taxed for the goods entering the United States? ”

“ He is the friend, the personal friend, of nearly every important man in the Caribbean, whether that official be British, French or Dutch; he is also regarded as a witch-master by half the black population. I have met him in the jungles, botanizing—and he is a good botanist—I have seen him suddenly appear as the owner of a sugar plantation, as a seeker for mining concessions, as a merchant, and as a hotel proprietor. ”

“ In Jacamal, a white man may be left alone, so long as he does not incur the enmity of the blacks; in Gonaive the foreign holders of concessions may protect him; in Port-au-Prince, the capital, he is safeguarded by the potent arm of the American marines; but, in the country districts back of Cap Haitien, the carrion buzzards may be the only witnesses of his fate. And, to that back country, the Cuban must go. All this, Manuel knew, and he was a shrewd enough man to dare to be afraid.
Stuart squatted in the shadow of the building while the Cuban sipped from his glass. ”

“ The Cuban showed his teeth in the gleam of a quick smile.
"The guards are too much afraid of the ghost of Christophe to dare enter the place," he said. "That was a good idea of yours."
The two men turned away from the battlements to the steps which led down toward the dwelling rooms, and Manuel laid finger on lip.
"It is well to be a ghost," he said, "but if the guards should chance to hear me talking to the ghost, they might begin to think. And thinking, my dear Leborge, is sometimes dangerous."
The huge negro nodded assent and hung back while Manuel descended the stair. ”

“ Dominica, the next island which Stuart passed after he had left Martinique, besides being one of the scenic glories of the world, described as "a tabernacle for the sun, a shrine of a thousand spires, rising tier above tier, in one exquisite fabric of green, purple and grey," has many claims to fame. Here, the cannibal Caribs were so fierce that for 255 years they defied the successive fleets of Spaniards, French and English who tried to take possession of the island. Some three hundred Caribs still dwell upon the island upon a reservation provided by the government. ”

“ Remember, Young Senor, the Cuban [Pg 111] guarijo does not feel himself to be a citizen of Cuba, as an American farmer feels himself a citizen of the United States. He has been brought up under Spanish rule, and is, himself, Spanish in feeling.
"What does he know about a republic? Unless he can get a political job for himself, unless he sees the chance to be a Rat, he cares nothing about politics, but he will fight, at any time, under any cause, for any leader who will promise him a bigger price for his sugar, his tobacco or his fruit. The World War helped him, for sugar was worth gold. ”

“ The proverb "When thieves fall out, honest men come by their own," rang through his head.
Manuel was obviously impressed.
"What do you know about this?" he asked curtly. "Tell your story."
"I hate Leborge," declared Stuart, trying to speak as a negro boy would speak. "He took away our land and killed my father. I want to kill him. He never talks to anybody, but he talks to himself. The other night I overheard him saying he 'must get rid of that Cuban at the Citadel of the Black Emperor.'
"So when I saw you here in Cap Haitien, I took a chance on it's being you he meant. ”

“ If you were a A Number One newspaper man, it would be your job to get on the trail of that story and run it down."
And then the reporter conceived the idea of playing on Stuart's sense of patriotism.
"That way," he went on, "it happens that there's no class of people that does more for its country than the newspaper men. They show up the crooks, and they can point out praise when public praise is due. They expose the grafters and help to elect the right man to office. They root out public evils and push reform measures through. They're Democracy, in type." ”

“ But the tents of the U. S. Marines, in camp a little distance down the beach, gave him courage. With his sublime faith in the United States, Stuart could not believe that he could come to any harm within sight of the Stars and Stripes floating from the flagstaff in front of the encampment.
While Stuart was thus getting backbone from his flag, Manuel was concentrating his wits and experience on this problem which threatened him so closely.
Was this boy a negro?
A life spent in international trickery on a large scale had made the Cuban a good judge of men. He knew native races. ”

“ Now, there are two powerful forces working underground in the West Indies. One is the Spanish and negro combination, which desires to shake off all the British, French and Dutch possessions, and to create a Creole Empire of the Islands. The other is an English plan, to weld all the British islands in the West Indies into a single Confederation and to buy as many of the smaller isles from France and Holland as may seem possible. Both are hostile to the extension of American power in the Gulf of Mexico. Possibly, some European power is back of this plot. ”