I have always gone about with bare feet, but I was not accustomed to that terrain, and my feet were bleeding. I was falling with fatigue; in contrast my master, twenty years older than I, walked without stopping, with Maurice's weight on his back. Finally Gambo, the youngest and strongest of our three, said we must rest. He helped us untie the children and we laid them on a pile of leaves after poking it with a stick to frighten off snakes. Gambo wanted the master's pistols, but Valmorain convinced him that they were more useful in his hands since Gambo knew nothing about such weapons. They made a pact that Gambo would carry one and the master two. We were near the swamps, and light barely shone through the leaves. The air was like hot water. The mud could swallow a man in two minutes, but Gambo did not seem disturbed. He found a pool; we drank, wet our clothing and that of the children, who were still sleeping hard; we shared some bread from the provisions, and rested a bit.

Soon Gambo started us out again, and the master, who had never taken orders in his life, obeyed without a word. The swamps were not a quagmire as I had imagined, but dirty, stagnant water and foul-smelling vapors. The ground was mud. I thought about Dona Eugenia, who would rather have fallen into the rebels' hands than pass through that dense fog of mosquitoes; fortunately, she was already in the Christians' heaven. Gambo knew the trail, but it wasn't easy to follow him carrying the weight of the children. Erzulie, loa of water, come to our aid. Gambo undid the tignon around my head, wrapped my feet in leaves, and bound them with the cloth. The master was wearing tall boots, and Gambo believed that the fangs of jungle creatures would not penetrate the soles of his feet. We went on.

Maurice was the first to wake, when we were still in the swamp, and he was frightened. When Rosette woke up, I put her to my breast awhile, still walking on, and she went back to sleep. We walked the entire day and reached Bois Cayman, where there was no danger of sinking into mud, but where we could be attacked. There Gambo had seen the beginning of the rebellion, when my godmother, mounted by Ogoun, sometimes called Ogu-Fer, called for war and named the chiefs. This Gambo told me. Since that time Tante Rose had gone from camp to camp healing people, celebrating services for the loas, and seeing into the future; she was feared and respected by all, fulfilling the destiny marked in her z'etoile. She had counseled Gambo to find a place under Toussaint's wing because he would be king when the war ended. Gambo had asked her if then we would be free, and she assured him we would, but first all the whites would have to be killed, including newborn babies, and there would be so much blood on the earth that ears of corn would grow red.

I gave more drops to the children and made them comfortable among the roots of a large tree. Gambo feared the packs of wild dogs more than humans or spirits, but we did not dare light a fire to keep them at a distance. We left the master with the children and the three loaded pistols, sure that he would not leave Maurice's side, while Gambo and I went a little way away to do what we wanted to do. Hatred deformed the master's face when I got up to follow Gambo, but he said nothing. I was afraid of what would happen to me later because I know the cruelty of whites at the hour of revenge, and that hour would come to me sooner or later. I was exhausted and sore from carrying Rosette, but the only thing I wanted was to put my arms around Gambo. At that moment nothing else mattered. Erzulie, loa of pleasure, allow this night to go on forever. This is how I remember it.

Fugitives

The rebels fell upon Saint-Lazare at that imprecise hour when night begins to recede, moments before the work bell rang to wake the workers. At first the attack was a resplendent comet's tail, points of light moving rapidly: the torches. The cane fields hid the human figures, but when they began to emerge from the thick vegetation it could be seen that they were hundreds. One of the guards was able to get to the bell, but twenty hands brandishing knives reduced him to an unrecognizable pulp. The dry cane burned first, then its heat set fire to the rest, and in less than twenty minutes the conflagration covered all the fields and advanced toward the big house. The flames leaped in all directions, so high and so powerful that the firebreak of the patios could not stop them. To the clamor of the fire was added the deafening shouting of the attackers and the lugubrious howls of the conch shells blowing to announce war. The men ran naked, or barely covered by shreds of clothing, armed with machetes, chains, knives, poles, bayonets, and muskets with no balls, which were held like cudgels. Many were smeared with soot, others were in a trance or drunk, but within the disorder was a single goal: destroy. The field slaves, intermingled with the domestics, who had been warned in time by the cook, abandoned their cabins and participated in that saturnalia of revenge and devastation. At first some hesitated, fearing the uncontainable violence of the rebels and the inevitable retaliation of the master, but they no longer had a choice. If they took one step back they would perish.

The commandeurs fell one by one into the hands of the horde, but Prosper Cambray and another two men ran to the storerooms of the big house with weapons and ammunition to defend themselves for several hours. They were confident that the fire would attract the marechaussee or the soldiers patrolling the region. The Negroes' attack had the fury and speed of a typhoon; it would last a couple of hours and then they would disperse. The overseer found it strange that the house was not occupied; he thought that Valmorain had in anticipation prepared an underground refuge and was crouching down there with his son, Tete, and the little girl. Cambray left his men and went to the office, which was always kept locked, but found it open. He did not know the combination to the safe and was ready to blow it apart-no one would know later who stole the gold-but it was open as well. Then came the first suspicion that Valmorain had fled without telling him. Damned coward! he exclaimed, furious. To save his miserable skin he had abandoned the plantation. With no time to bemoan that, he joined the others just as the uproar of the attack was upon them.

Cambray heard the whinnying of horses and barking of dogs, and could distinguish those of his murderous mastiffs; they were hoarser and fiercer. He knew that before his valiant dogs perished they would do away with several victims. The house was surrounded; the attackers had invaded the patios and were running over the garden; not one of Valmorain's precious orchids was left. The overseer heard them in the gallery, breaking down doors, climbing through windows, and demolishing anything they found before them, gutting the French furniture, ripping down Dutch tapestries, emptying Spanish chests, splintering Chinese screens, shattering porcelain, German clocks, golden cages, Roman statuary, and Venetian mirrors-everything that had been acquired by Violette Boisier. And when they tired of ransacking the house they began to look for the family. Cambray and the two commandeurs had stacked sacks, barrels, and furniture against the door of the storage rooms, and they began shooting between the iron bars that protected the small windows. Only wood boards separated them from the rebels, audacious with freedom and indifferent to bullets. In the early dawn light they saw several of them fall so close by they could smell them despite the fetid smoke of the burned cane. Others fell, and more came, stepping over bodies, before Cambray and his men could reload. They heard the blows against the door, the thudding, the wood shaken by a hurricane of hatred that had been accumulating strength across the Caribbean for a hundred years. Ten minutes later the big house was burning like an enormous bonfire. The rebellious slaves waited on the patio, and when the commandeurs ran out from the flames they caught them alive. They were not, however, able to inflict the torture Prosper Cambray deserved, because he chose to stick the barrel of his pistol into his mouth and blow his head off.