e had met one
of our freed servants, Jack, who would come soon to protect us.
Shortly after daybreak Jack did appear and mounted guard at the front
gate. "Go sleep, ole mis's. Miss Mary Ann" [Marion], "you-all go
sleep. Chaw! wha' foo all you set up all night? Si' Myra, you go draw
watah foo bile coffee."

The dreadful signals had ceased at last, and all lay down to rest; but
I remained awake and saw through the great seaward windows the
wonderful dawn of the tropics flush over sky and ocean. But presently
its heavenly silence was broken by the gallop of a single horse, and a
Danish orderly, heavily armed, passed the street-side windows, off at
last for Christiansted.

Soon the conchs and horns began again. With them was blent now the
tramp of many feet and the harsh voices of swarming insurgents. Their
long silence was explained; they had been sharpening their weapons.

Their first act of violence was to break open a sugar storehouse. They
mixed a barrel of sugar with one of rum, killed a hog, poured in his
blood, added gunpowder, and drank the compound--to make them brave.
Then with barrels of rum and sugar they changed a whole cistern of
water into punch, stirring it with their sharpened hoes, dipping it out
with huge sugar-boiler ladles, and drinking themselves half blind.

Jack dashed in from the gate: "Oh, Miss Marcia, go look! dem a-comin'!
Gin'ral Buddoe at dem head on he w'ite hoss."

We ran to the jalousies. In the street, coming southward toward the
fort, were full two thousand blacks. They walked and ran, the women
with their skirts tied up in fighting trim, and all armed with
hatchets, hoes, cutlasses, and sugar-cane bills. The bills were fitted
on stout pole handles, and all their weapons had been ground and
polished until they glittered horridly in their black hands and above
the gaudy Madras turbans or bare woolly heads and bloodshot eyes.

"Dem goin' to de fote to ax foo freedom," Jack cried.

At their head rode "Gin'ral Buddoe," large, powerful, black, in a
cocked hat with a long white plume. A rusty sword rattled at his
horse's flank. As he came opposite my window I saw a white man, alone,
step out from the house across the way and silently lift his arms to
the multitude to halt.

They halted. It was the Roman Catholic priest. For a moment they gave
attention, then howled, brandished their weapons, and pressed on. Aunt
Marcia dropped to her knees and in tears began to pray alo