Page:Cerise, a tale of the last century (IA cerisetaleoflast00whytrich).pdf/298

 put um fire out. Our work, make bobbery; your work, stay up mountain where spirit can hear, and pray Jumbo till monkeys wake."

A suspicion that had already dawned on the Quadroon's mind was now growing horribly distinct. It was obvious some important movement must be intended by the gang that filled her hut, and there was every fear a general rising might take place of all the slaves on the plantation, if indeed the insurrection spread no further than the Montmirail estate. She knew, none better, the nature of the half-reclaimed savage. She thought of her courageous, high-souled mistress, of her delicate, beautiful nursling, and shivered while she pictured them in the power of this huge black monster who sat grinning at her over the empty calabash. She even forgot for the moment her own long-lost son, hidden up within six feet of her, and the double danger he would run in the event of detection. She could only turn her mind in one direction, and that was, where Madame and Mademoiselle were sitting, placid and unconscious, in the rich white dresses her own fingers had helped to make.

Their possible fate was too horrible to contemplate. She forced it from her thoughts, and with all her power of self-concentration, addressed herself to the means of saving them at any cost. In such an emergency as the present, surrounded, and perhaps suspected, by the mutineers, dissimulation seemed her only weapon left, and to dissimulation she betook herself without delay.

"Hippolyte," said she, "you are a good soldier. You command all these black fellows; I can see it in your walk. I always said you had the air of an officer of France."

The Coromantee seemed not insensible to flattery. He grinned, wagged his head, rolled his eyes, and was obviously well pleased.

"Dese niggers make me deir colonel," said he, springing from the floor to an attitude of military attention. "Hab words of command like buckra musketeer. Par file à droite—Marche! Volte-face! Run for your lives!"

"I knew it," she replied, "and you ought to have learned already to trust your comrades. Are we not in the same ranks? You say yourself, yellow and black are all one.