Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/280

 had already given rise to the suspicion that they were guided in their enterprise by some being superior to themselves. They no longer exposed themselves in masses to the destructive sweep of cannon and small arms, but by scattering their detachments, by suddenly dispersing to the shelter of hedges and thickets, when occasion required, they often succeeded in surprising or surrounding their enemy, and when neither could be done, in crushing them by a vast superiority in numbers. While the preparations for the attack were in progress, their obies performed the Ouangah, or mysterious rite to their demons, by which the imaginations of the multitude were heated and strained to the utmost degree of tension, and the women and children danced an accompaniment to the ceremony with bowlings and outcries that savored of Pandemonium. Amid the excitement of this wild uproar, the attack began with yells and terrific gesticulations. If they met with a firm and effective resistance, the energy of their attack soon slackened; but if the defense was weak and faltering, their boldness and audacity became extreme. They rushed forward to the cannon's mouth, and thrusting in their arms and bodies, purchased the retreat of the enemy by this self-immolation. Contortions and bowlings were not the only means they used to intimidate their adversaries — the flames which they applied to the highly inflammable fields of cane, to the houses and mills of the plantations, and to their own cabins, covered the heavens with clouds of smoke by day, and illuminated the horizon by night with gleams that gave to every object the color of blood. After a silence the most profound, there would arise an outcry from their camp the most appalling; this would again be followed by the plaintive cries of their prisoners, whom the savages made it their sport to sacrifice at their advance posts.

The insurgents, in full possession of the plain of Cape François, were reveling amidst the spoils of the vanquished. The colonists, to intimidate them, changed the sluggish and inefficient war they were carrying on to one of extermination. This was ill-timed and impolitic, for the insurrection had grown too strong to yield to fear, and the negroes repaid the cruelty by augmenting the tortures of their own captives. The negro chiefs would have no neutrals among those of their race, and the more faithful slaves, who were found concealing themselves from the rebels, were immediately put to de by their own countrymen. On the other hand, parties of enraged whites were traversing the country, and, with an undiscriminating vengeance, killing every living thing that was black. The faithful slave, who, in this reciprocal destruction, came to claim the protection of his master against those who on either side sought his life, was in many instances put to death by that very master himself. This blind severity served no purpose but to swell the ranks of the rebels, for the peaceable negro could find no security for his life but by assuming arms in the ranks of his countrymen.

In the first moments of the rebellion, the negroes had murdered all their prisoners, but as success increased, the complacency of triumph taught them more clemency, or perhaps they had become glutted with cruelty and crime. They no longer massacred the women and children, and only showed themselves