ud; but we
cried to her that Rachel, a slave woman, was coming, who must not see
our alarm. Indeed, both Rachel and Tom had already entered.

"La! Miss Mary Ann, wha' fur you cryin'? Who's goin' tech you?"
Rachel held by its four corners a Madras kerchief full of sugar. "Da
what we done come fur, to tell Miss Paula" [grandmamma] "not be
frightened."

Tom was off again while grandmamma said: "Rachel, you've been stealing."

"Well, Miss Paula! ain't I gwine hab my sheah w'en dem knock de head'
out dem hogsitt' an' tramp de sugah under dah feet an' mix a whole
cisron o' punch?"

Rachel told the events of the night. But as she talked a roar without
rose higher and higher, and I, running with Jack to the gate, beheld
two smaller mobs coming round a near corner. The foremost was dragging
along the ground by ropes a huge object, howling, striking, and hacking
at it. The other was doing the same to something smaller tied to a
stick of wood, and the air was full of their cries:

"To de sea! Frow it in de sea! You'll nebber hole obbe" [us] "no mo'!
You'll be drownded in de sea-watah!" Their victims were the
whipping-post and the thumbscrews.

Tom returned to say: "Dem done to'e up de cote-house and de Jedge's
house, an' now dem goin' Bay Street too tear up de sto'es."

Gilbert came up from the fort telling what he had seen. The blacks had
tried to scale the ramparts, on one another's shoulders, howling for
freedom and defying the garrison to fire. But the commander had not
dared without orders from the governor, and his courier had not
returned. A leading merchant standing on the fort wall was less
discreet: "Take the responsibility! Fire! Every white man on the
island will sustain you, and you'll end the whole thing here!"

Upon that word off again up-town had gone the whole black swarm, had
sacked the bold merchant's store, and seemed now, by the noises they
made, to be sacking others. "I come," Gilbert said, "with an offer of
the ship-captains to take the white people aboard the ships."

As he turned away groups of negroes began to dash by laden with all
sorts of "prog" [booty] from the wrecked stores. Grandmamma had lain
down, my aunts were trying to make up some sort of midday meal, and I
was standing alone behind the jalousies, when a ferocious-looking negro
rattled them with his bill.

"Lidde gal, gi' me some watah."

"Wait a minute," I said, and left the room. If I hid he might burst in
and