Page:Cerise, a tale of the last century (IA cerisetaleoflast00whytrich).pdf/312

 The lamps were already lit in the sitting-room on the ground floor. From where she stood, in the midst of the band, outwardly stern and collected, quivering with rage and fear within, the Quadroon could distinguish the figures of Madame la Marquise and her daughter, moving here and there in the apartment, or leaning out at window for a breath of the cool, refreshing evening air.

Their commander kept his men under covert of the woods, waiting till it should be quite dark. There was little to fear from a garrison consisting of but two ladies, backed by Fleurette and Bartoletti, for the other domestic slaves were either involved in the conspiracy or had been inveigled out of the way by its chief promoters; yet notwithstanding the weakness of the besieged, some dread of their ascendancy made the negroes loth to encounter by daylight even such weak champions of the white race as two helpless women and a cowardly Italian overseer.

Nevertheless, every moment gained was worth a purse of gold. Célandine, affecting to identify herself with the conspirators, urged on them the prudence of delay. Hippolyte, somewhat deceived by her enthusiasm, offered an additional reason for postponing the attack, in the brilliancy of a conflagration under a night sky. He intended, he said, to begin by setting fire to the house—there could then be no resistance from within. There would be plenty of time, he opined, for drink and plunder before the flames gained a complete ascendancy, and he seemed to cherish some vague half-formed notion that it would be a fine thing to appear before Cerise in the character of a hero, who should rescue her from a frightful death.

A happy thought struck the Quadroon.

"It was lucky you brought me with you," said she earnestly. "Brave as you are, I fancy you would have been scared had you acted on your own plan. You talk of firing Cash-a-crou, as you would of roasting a turtle in its shell. Do you know that madame keeps a dozen barrels of gunpowder stowed away about the house—nobody knows where but herself. You would have looked a little foolish, I think, my brave colonel, to find your long body blown clean over the Sulphur Mountain into the sea on the other