Page:Cerise, a tale of the last century (IA cerisetaleoflast00whytrich).pdf/320

 work giving way with a crash, precipitated himself into the passage, followed by the rest of the band, to be confronted by Fleurette alone, Bartoletti having fled ignominiously to the kitchen.

"I could have hit him through the neck," observed the Marquise, withdrawing from her post behind the shutter, "but I was too directly above him to make sure, and every charge is so valuable I would not waste one on a mere wound. My darling, I still hope that two or three deadly shots may intimidate them, and we shall escape after all."

Cerise answered nothing, though her lips moved. The two ladies listened, with every faculty sharpened, every nerve strung to the utmost.

A scream from Fleurette thrilled through them like a blow. Hippolyte, though willing enough to dally with the comely black girl for a minute or two, lost patience with her pertinacity in clinging about him to delay his entrance, and struck her brutally to the ground. Turning fiercely on him where she lay, she made her sharp teeth meet in the fleshy part of his leg, an injury the savage returned with a kick, that after the first shriek it elicited left poor Fleurette stunned and moaning in the corner of the passage, to be crushed and trampled by the blacks, who now poured in behind their leader, elated with the success of this, their first step in open rebellion.

Presently, loud shouts, or rather howls of triumph, announced that the overseer's place of concealment was discovered. Bartoletti, pale or rather yellow, limp, stammering, and beside himself with terror, was dragged out of the house and consigned to sundry ferocious-looking negroes, who proceeded to amuse themselves by alternately kicking, cuffing, and threatening him with instantaneous death.

The Marquise listened eagerly; horror, pity, and disgust succeeding each other on her haughty, resolute face. Once, something like contempt swept over it, while she caught the tone of Bartoletti's abject entreaties for mercy. He only asked for life—bare life, nothing more; they might make a slave of him then and there. He was their property, he and his wife, and all that he had, to do what they liked with. Only let him live, he said, and he would join them heart and hand; show them where the rum was kept, the