Plotting in Pirate Seas Part 3

The Cuban grew cold, under the burning sun, and, professional conspirator though he was, his face blenched. His hand instinctively sought the pocket wherein lay his revolver.

Yet he dare not kill. Five years of American occupation had bred a sense of law and order in the coast towns, at least, which had not been known in Haiti for a century and more. Any violence would lead to inquiry, and Manuel's record was not one which would bear investigation.

How came this ragged Haitian urchin to know? Manuel's swift glance at Stuart had shown him nothing but a Creole lad in clothes too big for him and a pair of boots fastened with string. The messenger meant nothing, it was the message which held menace.

To the Cuban this apparently chance street encounter was ominous of black threat. It revealed treachery and might mean a trap. But from whence? Swiftly Manuel's keen brain, the brain of an arch-plotter, scanned the manifold aspects of this sudden threat.

How much labor, how many wild adventures, what a series of dangers would Stuart have escaped, had he but been able to read the thoughts of that crafty brain!

Did his fellow-conspirators want to get rid of him? So Manuel's doubts ran. Did they count on his shooting the boy, in a panic, and being lynched for it, there and then, on the street of Cap Haitien? Or of his being imprisoned, tried and executed for murder? Such a plot was not unlikely.

But, if so, who had sent the boy?

Was Cesar Leborge playing him false? True, from that bull-necked, ferocious negro general, Manuel knew he could expect nothing but brutality, envy and hate; but such a design as this boy's intervention seemed too subtle for the giant Creole's brain. Manuel accounted himself master of the negro when it came to treachery and cunning. Moreover, he knew Leborge to be a sullen and suspicious character, little likely to talk or to trust anyone.

What did the boy know? Manuel flashed a look at him. But Stuart was idly fiddling in the dust with the toe of his ragged boot, and the Cuban's suspicions flashed to another quarter.

Could the Englishman, Guy Cecil, be to blame? That did not seem any more likely. Manuel was afraid of Cecil, though he would not admit it, even to himself. The Englishman's chill restraint, even in moments of the most tense excitement, cowed the Cuban. Never had he been able to penetrate into his fellow-conspirator's thoughts. But that Cecil should have talked loosely of so vital, so terrible a secret? No. The grave itself was not more secretive than that quiet schemer, of whom nothing ever seemed to be known. And to a negro boy! No, a thousand times, no!

Stay--was this boy a negro boy? Suspicion changed its seat in the wily Cuban's brain. That point, at least, he would find out, and swiftly. He looked at his ragged questioner, still fiddling with his toe in the dust, and answered.

"Well," he said, "you can show me what there is to be seen in this place. But first I will go to the Cafe. No," he continued, as the boy turned towards the new part of the town, built under American oversight, "not there. To the Cafe de l'Opera. Go down the street and keep a few steps in front."

Stuart obeyed. He had seen the first swift motion of the Cuban's hand, when he had been accosted, and had guessed that it was pistolwards. It was uncomfortable walking in front of a man who was probably aching to blow one's brains out. Nasty little cold shivers ran up and down Stuart's back. But the tents of the U. S. Marines, in camp a little distance down the beach, gave him courage. With his sublime faith in the United States, Stuart could not believe that he could come to any harm within sight of the Stars and Stripes floating from the flagstaff in front of the encampment.

While Stuart was thus getting backbone from his flag, Manuel was concentrating his wits and experience on this problem which threatened him so closely.

Was this boy a negro?

A life spent in international trickery on a large scale had made the Cuban a good judge of men. He knew native races. He knew--what the white man generally ignores or forgets--that between the various black races are mental differences as wide as between races of other color. He knew that the Ewe negro is no more like the Riff in character, than the phlegmatic Dutchman resembles the pa.s.sionate Italian. If a black, to what race did this boy belong? Was he a black, at all?

The bright sun threw no reflected lights on the boy's skin, the texture of which was darker than that of a mulatto, and had a dead, opaque look, lacking the golden glow of mulatto skin. The lad's hair showed little hint of Bantu ancestry and his feet were small. True, all this might betoken any of the Creole combinations common in Haiti, but the Cuban was not satisfied. If the skin had been stained, now----

"Boy!" he called.

Stuart looked around.

"Here are some coppers for you."

The boy slouched toward him, extended his hand negligently and the Cuban dropped some three-centime pieces into it.

Stuart mumbled some words of thanks, imitating, as far as he could, the Haitian dialect, but, despite his desire to act the part, feeling awkward in receiving charity.

Manuel watched him closely, then, abruptly, bade him go on ahead. The scrutiny had increased his uneasiness.

This self-appointed guide was no negro, no mulatto, of that Manuel was sure. The money had been received without that wide answering grin of pleasure characteristic in almost all negro types. Moreover, the palms of the boy's hands were the same color as the rest of his skin. The Cuban knew well that a certain dirty pallor is always evident on the palms of the hands of even the blackest negroes.

The boy's reference to the "Citadel of the Black Emperor" showed that he was aware of this secret meeting of conspirators.

This was grave.

More, he was disguised.

This was graver still.

Was this boy, too, afraid of Haiti, that savage land at the doors of America; that abode where magic, superst.i.tion and even cannibalism still lurk in the forests; that barbarous republic where the white man is despised and hated, and the black man dominates? That land where the only civilizing force for a century has been a handful of American marines!

That this boy was disguised suggested that he was in fear for his life; but, if so, why was he there? How did he come to know the pa.s.s-word of the conspiracy? For what mysterious reason did he offer himself as a guide to the haunted place of meeting?

Who was this boy?

Manuel turned into the Cafe de l'Opera, a tumble-down frame shack with a corrugated iron roof, to order a cooling drink and to puzzle out this utterly baffling mystery.

The Cuban's first impulse was to flee. Had anything less imperious than this all-important meeting been before him, Manuel would have made his escape without a moment's delay.

Cap Haitien is no place for a white man who has fallen under suspicion.

Of the four gateways into Haiti it is the most dangerous. In Jacamal, a white man may be left alone, so long as he does not incur the enmity of the blacks; in Gonaive the foreign holders of concessions may protect him; in Port-au-Prince, the capital, he is safeguarded by the potent arm of the American marines; but, in the country districts back of Cap Haitien, the carrion buzzards may be the only witnesses of his fate.

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 gla.s.s. 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.

Save for a small and recently rebuilt section in the heart of the town--which boasted some 10,000 inhabitants--flimsy frame houses rose in white poverty upon the ruins of what was once known as "the little Paris of the West Indies." Of the ma.s.sive buildings of a century ago, not one remained whole. The great earthquake of 1842 did much toward their destruction; the orgy of loot and plunder which followed, did more; but the chiefest of all agents of demolition was the black man's rule.

The s.p.a.cious residences were never rebuilt, the fallen aqueducts were left in ruins, the boulevards fell into disrepair and guinea-gra.s.s rioted through the cracked pavements. 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed back "Little Paris," and Cap Haitien became a huddled cl.u.s.ter of pitiful buildings scattered among the rubbish-heaps and walls of a once-beautiful stone-built town.

This appearance of desolation, however, was contradicted by the evidence of commercial activity. The sea-front was a whirl of noise.

The din of toil was terrific. Over the cobblestoned streets came rough carts drawn by four mules--of the smallest race of mules in the world--and these carts clattered down noisily with their loads of coffee-sacks, the drivers shouting as only a Haitian negro can shout. At the wharf, each cart was at once surrounded by a cl.u.s.ter of negroes, each one striving to outshout his fellows, while the bawling of the driver rose high above all. Lines of negroes, naked to the waist, sacks on their glistening backs, poured out from the warehouses like ants from an anthill, but yelling to out-vie the carters. The tiny car-line seemed to exist only to give opportunity for the perpetual clanging of the gong; and the toy wharf railway expended as much steam on its whistle as on its piston-power.

Stuart had visited the southern part of Haiti with his father, especially the towns of Port-au-Prince and Jacamel, and he was struck with the difference in the people. Cap Haitien is a working town and its people are higher grade than the dwellers in the southern part of the republic. The south, however, is more populous. Haiti is thickly inhabited, with 2,500,000 people, of whom only 5,000 are foreigners, and of these, not more than 1,000 are whites. The island is incredibly fertile. A century and a quarter ago it was rich, and could be rich again. Its coffee crop, alone, could bring in ample wealth.

To Stuart's eyes, coffee was everywhere. The carts were loaded with coffee, the sacks the negroes carried were coffee-sacks, the shining green berries were exposed to dry on stretches of sailcloth in vacant lots, among the ruins on the sides of the streets. Haitian coffee is among the best in the world, but the Haitian tax is so high that the product cannot be marketed cheaply, the American public will not pay the high prices it commands, and nearly all the crop is shipped to Europe.

"Look at that coffee!" Stuart's father had exclaimed, just a week before. "Where do you suppose it comes from, Stuart? From cultivated plantations? Very little of it. Most of the crop is picked from half-wild shrubs which are the descendants of the carefully planted and cultivated shrubs which still linger on the plantations established under French rule, a century and a half ago. A hundred years of negro power in Haiti has stamped deterioration, dirt and decay on the island."

"But that'll all change, now we've taken charge of the republic!" had declared Stuart, confident that the golden letters "U. S." would bring about the millennium.

His father had wrinkled his brows in perplexity and doubt.

"It would change, my boy," he said, "if America had a free hand. But she hasn't."

"Why not?"

"Because, officially, we have only stepped in to help the Haitians arrive at 'self-determination.' The treaty calls for our aid for ten years, with a possibility of continuing that protection for another ten years. But we're not running the country, we're only policing it and advising the Haitians as to how things should be handled."

"Do you think they'll learn?"

"To govern themselves, you mean? Yes. To govern themselves in a civilized manner? No. I wouldn't go so far as to say that slavery or peonage are the only ways to make the up-country Haitian negro work, though a good many people who have studied conditions here think so.