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My fine cane-fields were altogether destroyed, and the country, which previously had appeared so beautiful, seemed as if it had passed through a long wintry season. There was no longer any verdure to be seen; the trees were entirely leafless, with their boughs broken, and portions of the wood were entirely torn down; and all this devastation had taken place within a few hours.
Hides from frozen Russia were piled high beside barrels of sugar and rum from the moist island cane-fields of the Indies, and pipes of wine from the sunny hillsides of France, and big boxes of tea bearing the hall-mark of the mysterious East. Dolly gazed in wonder. And I was commanded to show her a schooner like the Black Moll, and a brigantine like the John.
A little way on several paths branched off through patches of second-growth forest to cane-fields, gardens, and scattered houses, beyond which again the dark wall of verdure striped with tree-trunks, marked out the limits of the primeval forests.
During the rice culture they remain in the gogonales, cane-fields which arise in places once cultivated for mountain-rice and afterwards abandoned. Transport then is almost impossible, because during the rainy season the roads are impassable, and the cattle find nothing to eat. The native does not feed his beast, but allows it to die when it cannot support itself.
He gave Rachael his arm in the courtly fashion of the day, and they walked about the open paths and talked of the negroes singing in the cane-fields, and the squalid poverty of the North, as if their hearts were as calm as they are to-day. People turned often to look at them, commenting according to the mixing of their essences, but all concurring in praise of so much beauty.
I will see that all the servants have retired," said Jaspar, pushing his confederate into an adjoining apartment. A light pull at the bell-rope brought to the library the body-servant of the late planter. This "boy," who was known by the name of Hatchie, was a mulatto. He was about forty years of age, and, having never been reduced to labor in the cane-fields, bore his age remarkably well.
Dyck talked to them presently without turning round, for that might have roused suspicion, and while they were out of danger now, there was the future and Dyck's plan which he now unfolded. "They'll come down into the open before it's dark," he said quietly, "and when they do that, we'll have 'em. They've no chance to ambush in the cane-fields now. We'll get them in the open, and wipe them out.
Next were listed the watchmen, thirty-one in number, to guard against depredations of men, cattle and rats and against conflagrations which might sweep the ripening cane-fields and the buildings. All of these were black but the mulatto foreman, and only six were described as able-bodied.
These were annoying reflections, and while he resolved to be more temperate in future, how fervently he adjured his patron demon to ward off any danger he might have courted in his inebriation! After his accustomed ride through the cane-fields, he retired to the library. The decanter had been replenished with brandy, and his late resolutions did not deter him from freely imbibing of its contents.
At last he was in the cane-fields of his destination, and the horse, as if in communication with that ardent brain so close to his own, suddenly accelerated his already mercurial pace, until it seemed to Alexander that he gathered up his legs and darted like an inflated swallow straight through crashing avenues and flying huts to the stable door.
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