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Updated: June 25, 2025
With rest, his spirits and energy had returned, but he was practically helpless without his revolver. Besides, on this desolate bit of beach on the eastern end of Cuba, even if he could escape from his captor, he would be marooned. Such money as the boy possessed was secreted in Cap Haitien, most of his friends lived in Western Cuba.
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. Thus, each doubting the other, and each fearing the other, they gazed over the busy desolation of Cap Haitien, a town unlike any other on earth.
To those who take the road from Cap Haitien to Millot today, the existence of that ancient highway seems incredible. Yet, though only a century old, it is almost as hopelessly lost as the road in the Sahara Desert over which, once, toiling slaves in Egypt dragged the huge stones of which the Pyramids of Ghizeh were built. Stuart and the Cuban had made a late start.
Back of the town the plantations were neglected, the great houses fallen, while the present owners lived contentedly in the little huts which once had been built for slaves. The ruthless hands of time, weather and the jungle snatched back "Little Paris," and Cap Haitien became a huddled cluster of pitiful buildings scattered among the rubbish-heaps and walls of a once-beautiful stone-built town.
His own telegrams, and those from the Secretary of the Navy, had ensured preparations for coaling all vessels as they arrived, to the utmost rapidity that the facilities of the port admitted. The St. Paul, whose orders had been again changed, sailed the same evening for Cape Haïtien.
President Hippolyte sent for him. He offered to make him a general, a full general, if he would but tell where he had found the treasure. He showed him the uniform. It was gold laced, yes, gold lace all over! Dimanche was nearly tempted, but not quite. "Then they let him come back here, to Cap Haitien, Yes. All the day and all the night he was kept under watch. Ah, that was a strict watch!
The most recent and perhaps the most disastrous earthquake was that of 1842 when a violent commotion in the northern part of the island demolished the cities of Santiago de los Caballeros on the Dominican side and Cape Haitien on the Haitian side, bringing death to hundreds of their inhabitants.
"You would hardly think," said the Cuban, "that, a hundred years ago, a stone-built road, as straight as an arrow, ran from Cap Haitien to Millot, and that over it, Toussaint l'Ouverture, 'the Black Napoleon, was wont to ride at breakneck speed, and Christophe, 'the black Emperor, drove his gaudy carriage with much pomp and display."
With his still imperfect information he gave no immediate orders which would lose him his hold of the Harvard and the Yale; but shortly after midnight he learned, off Cape Haïtien, that the Spanish division was to have left Curaçao the previous evening at six o'clock only six hours before this despatch reached him.
It was the one call that the jungle blood of the negro could not resist. He held out his hand for the money. "You go into Cap Haitien alone?" he queried, thickly. "Yes, I'll promise that," the boy agreed. He dismounted, swung his knapsack on his back, and handed the reins of the mule to Hippolyte, who sat, still uncertain.
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