three days of heat, glare, hubbub, and anxious suspense dragged away, and thursday's gorgeous sunset brought a change. the danish frigate, bright with flags and swarming with sailors, swept in, dropped anchor, and wrapped herself in thunder and white smoke. soon she lowered a boat, a glittering officer took its tiller-ropes, its long oars flashed, and it bore away to the fort. but evening fell, a starry silence reigned, and when a late moon rose we slept.
next morning we knew that captain erminger, of the frigate, had assumed command over the whole island, declared martial law, landed his marines, and begun operations. soon the harbor was populous again, with refugees returning home. tom came with his boat. just as we started landward a schooner came round the bluffs bringing the spaniards. at early twilight these landed and marched with much clatter through the vacant streets to the town's various points of entrance, there to mount guard, the danes having gone to scatter the insurgents.
the pursuing forces, in two bodies, were to move toward each other from opposite ends of the island, spanning it from sea to sea and meeting in the centre, thus entirely breaking up the bands of aimless pillagers into which the insurrection had already dispersed. this took but a few days. buddoe was almost at once trapped by the baldest flatteries of two leading danish residents and, finding himself without even the honor of armed capture, betrayed his confederates and disappeared.
only one small band of blacks made any marked resistance. under a certain "moses" they occupied a hill, hurling down stones upon their assailants, but were soon captured. many leaders of the revolt were condemned and shot, displaying in most cases a total absence of fortitude.
in less than a week from the day of flight to the ships quiet was restored, and a meeting of planters was adopting rules and rates for the employment of the freed slaves. some estates resumed work at once; on others the ravages of the torch had first to be repaired. some negroes would not work, and it was months before all the windmills on the hills were once more whirling. the spaniards lingered long, but were finally relieved by a danish regiment. captain erminger was commended by his home government. the governor was censured and superseded. the planters got no pay for their slaves.
the government may have argued that the ex-master should no more be paid for his slave than the ex-slave recover back pay for his labor; and that, after all, a general emancipation was only a moderate raising of wages unjustly low and uniform. both kings and congresses will at times do the easy thing instead of the fair one and let two wrongs offset each other. make haste, rising generations! and, as you truly honor your fathers, bring to their graves the garlandry of juster laws and kinder, purer days.
to different minds this true story will speak, no doubt, a varying counsel. some will believe that the lovely island was saved from the agonies of a haytian revolution only through iron suppression. to others it will appear that the old governor's rashly timorous edict was, after all, the true source of deliverance. certainly the question remains, whether even the most sudden and ill-timed concession of rights, if only backed by energetic police action, is not a prompter, surer cure for public disorder than whole batteries of artillery without the concession of rights. i believe the most blundering effort for the prompt undoing of a grievous wrong is safer than the shrewdest or strongest effort for its continuance. meanwhile, with what patience doth god wait for man to learn his lessons! the holy cross still glitters on the bosom of its crystal sea, as it shone before the carib danced on its snowy sands, and as it will still shine when some new columbus, as yet unborn, brings to it the christianity of a purer day than ours.
chester shook the pages together on his knee.
"oh-h-h!" cried mlle. corinne to yvonne, to aline, to mlle. castanado, "the en'! and--where is all that abbout that beautiful cat what was the proprity of dora? everything abbout that cat of dora--scratch out! ah, mr. chezter! yvonne and me, we find that the moze am-using part--that episode of the cat--that large, wonderful, mazculine cat of dora! ah, madame" [to the chair], "hardly marie madeleine is more wonderful than that--when jack pritend to lift his li'l' miztress through the surf of the sea, how he flew at the throat of jack, that aztonishing mazculine cat! ah, m'sieu' beloiseau!--and to scradge that!"
but beloiseau was judicially calm. "yes, i rim-ember that portion. scientific-ally i foun' that very interezting; but, like mr. chezter, i thing tha'z better art that the tom-cat be elimin-ate."
"well," said the chair, "w'at we want to settle--shall we accep' that riv-ision of mr. chezter, to combine it in the book--'clock in the sky,' 'angel of the lord,' 'holy crozz'--seem' to me that combination goin' to sell like hot cake'."
"yes! agcept!" came promptly from two or three.
"any oppose'? there is not any oppose'--seraphine--marcel--you'll be so good to pazz those rif-reshment?"
