Chapter LXII: Scipio

"Our orders are, that we take no prisoners, but strike terror by the fury of our attack and the severity of our treatment," said I, as the company re-entered the pass; for human life had now become such a cheap commodity, that if we set little value on our own existence, we put none whatever on that of others--of the insurgent negroes, especially.

Dividing the company in two, as we drew near the camp. I heard once more the wild clamour of its occupants, and saw the wavering gleams of their watchfire falling on rock and tree. With one subdivision of forty men I marched to assail the palisade in front, while my lieutenant--an officer who afterwards commanded a battalion of the 60th under the Duke of Wellington, with the remainder, led by the quadroon guide, made a dètour to the left, and ascended by the secret path already mentioned.

On him, and this flank movement, I principally placed my hopes of success; from the point he could attain, he was to throw a shower of hand-grenades into the camp, and then, under cover of a volley, rush down among its dingy occupants with the charged bayonet, while I attacked them from the pathway at the same moment.

The grenades, which have now unaccountably sunk into disuse, were then much used by our regiment, and by all grenadier companies. They are hollow balls or shells, two inches and a half in diameter, which, after being charged with fine powder, are set on fire by means of a slender fuse driven into the touch-hole. On exploding, it carries mutilation and death to all in its vicinity.

I turned to the peak of La Souffrière; the time was critical. The rising moon filled all the clear sky beyond the sulphur mountain with a liquid light, amid which the brightest stars were lost. In ten minutes she would be above its peak, from which a stupendous column of black smoke was now ascending for miles into the pure blue sky.

Softly we drew near the negro fortress, and I could see among the dense mangroves and shrubbery the occasional glitter of arms, as our left subdivision ascended the height, while we toiled straight forward, over rocks and stones, and matters less pleasant--such as the mutilated and charred remains of the white population who had fallen victims to the worshippers of the Fetish, and whose cloven caputs were strung around his monstrous visage. Snakes hissed among the long grass, frogs squattered, and gorged rats and land-crabs scampered away by dozens on all sides, as we approached the palisades.

Suddenly a shrill yell, and the explosion of a musket, the ball of which whistled past me, informed us that the black sentinel who watched the road that led through the Dos d'Ane had perceived us, just as I formed the subdivision in line, rank entire, or what is often termed in Indian file, to show a greater front.

"Forward men," I exclaimed; "down with the palisades, and at them with the bayonet!"

With a cheer we rushed on; six men with sharp hatchets assailed the bamboo palisade, which fell like reeds before their sturdy blows; and just as Scipio and his sooty ragamuffins hurried to defend the gap, a loud hurrah on our left, and the explosion of forty hand-grenades that fell whizzing through the darkness, each bursting among them with a loud report and a ruddy glare, paralyzed the savages, and in a moment struck them with a panic, which a combined cross-fire, and an attack in front and flank with the charged bayonet, completed. They threw down their arms and fled by a passage on the other side of their pah, or camp, abandoning to us all their wigwams, their accumulated plunder, the idol, their fetishes, and what was of much more importance to me, their miserable prisoner, old Monsieur George de Thoisy, whom we found tied by manilla ropes, and lying almost senseless with fear, in expectation of a barbarous death. Scipio was overtaken by Sergeant Drumbirrel, who, as he stumbled down the rocks, ran three feet of his pike through his body and killed him on the spot.

By the explosion of the grenades and by the cross-fire we had poured into the place, nearly four hundred blacks were killed or wounded within it. Many of the latter were bayoneted by our men, whose legs and feet they bit and tore with their teeth and nails, like wild animals.

"Take care of the women," I exclaimed, as our fire fell among them.

"Where the men are so bad, captain, the squaws cannot be very good," replied a soldier; "but we must not shoot them I suppose, at all events."

Among other things, we found a supper which some of the Congo fair ones had been cooking in a vast copper brought from a sugar-mill. It was highly seasoned in honour of the contemplated demise of M. de Thoisy; and its odour was so savoury, that many of my fellows were tempted to partake of the contents, which consisted of ducks, geese, chickens, &c.; but on Tom Telfer and others, who mistrusted the culinary tastes of the ladies of Congo, poking deeper with their bayonets, they fished up, to their own great merriment and the disgust of the others, two fat monkeys, a pointer bitch and her litter of puppies, all redolent, however, of pepper, nutmeg, and pimento.

We followed the fugitive negroes for nearly a mile beyond the pass, shooting them down like crows, till we got tired of the work, as the poor devils were too terrified to fire a shot in return, or had thrown away their muskets; so, by sound of bugle I recalled my men--only eight of whom had fallen in storming the stockade--for now columns of smoke and sheets of red flame, rising from the cane-fields on both flanks and in front, showed that the retreating blacks had fired the country on all sides. We heard the crackling of the canes, with the crash of cocoa-trees, while, with the slightest breath of wind, the smoke enveloped us to the verge of suffocation, with a storm of red sparks which made us apprehensive that the ammunition in the pouches might explode.

Beyond the pass opened Cabesterre, and at our feet lay a beautiful savannah (the _Sabana Verde_ of the Spaniards); it was of great extent, and its greenness, so pale in the light of the moon, which was now high above La Souffrière, was darkened here and there by the sombre foliage of the mahogany-trees under which the listless cattle lay to catch the currents of air. In other places, the yellower tints of the savannah were dotted by solemn scriptural palms, some with drooping branches, and others with foliage that stood up like tufts of ostrich-feathers.

Our grim work was over now!

We buried the dead in a trench; destroyed their idol, and returned through the pass to head-quarters which we reached on the following night, and there I was thanked for my services and small display of skill and strategy by Sir Charles Grey in general orders.

_En route_, we left M. de Thoisy (a fine-looking old gentleman who interlarded every remark with eternal references to his late most Christian Majesty) at the avenue of his own mansion, where he never hoped to have been again, and where he overwhelmed me with vows, blessings, thanks, and invitations. Gratitude for preservation, after all he had undergone, made the poor man ready to worship me, and his heart filled to overflowing.

I remember that on returning from this expedition I lost two of my men, who fell into a hot marsh, and were suffocated before we could extricate them.