City in the Sahara - Barsac Mission 02
CHAPTER XIII
A NIGHT OF BLOODSHED
Overwhelmed by the frightful experience they had just undergone, forgetting all except their own sufferings, Jane and Lewis Blazon stayed for some time huddled together. Then they gradually overcame their emotion; and at last, sighing deeply, they regained their awareness of the outside world.
What first struck them, in spite of the confused noise which rumbled around them, was a disquieting feeling of silence. In the corridor, still brightly lit by the electric lamps, was the peace of the grave. The Palace seemed to be dead. Outside, on the other hand, a tumultous din, the sound of firearms, an uproar which every minute increased in strength.
For a moment they listened attentively to these inexplicable sounds, then Jane suddenly realized their meaning. She turned towards her brother. "Can you walk?" she asked.
"I'll try," Lewis answered.
"Come along then," she told him.
The two were a pitiable sight as, the girl supporting a man worn out by four months of suffering, they left the dungeon, traversed the corridor, and arrived at the vestibule, where the guard had been waiting.
He had gone, and the vestibule was deserted.
They painfully climbed the staircase up to the third floor. Using the key she had taken from William Ferney, Jane opened the door at the top landing. Then, followed by Lewis, she entered the room, where shortly before she had left in his drunken stupor the monstrous lunatic in whom she had then failed to recognize her half brother.
Like the vestibule below, the room was empty, but nothing else had changed since she left it. Forney's armchair still stood behind the table, laden with its glasses and bottles, and the nine other chairs were still ranged in a semicircle facing it.
After leading her brother to a seat, for his legs were giving way beneath him, Jane realized thestrangeness of the situation in which they found themselves. Why this solitude, and why this silence? What had become of their executioner?
Giving way to a sudden impulse, she ventured to leave Lewis, and courageously went out into the Palace, exploring it in every direction.
She began with the ground floor, and did not leave a corner uninvestigated. Going past the outer door, one glance showed her that it had been carefully shut. Throughout the ground floor she saw nobody; all its inner doors stood wide open, just as its inhabitants had left them. With increasing astonishment she traversed the other floors and found them equally deserted. However incredible this might be, thePalace seemed to be empty.
The floors having been investigated, {here remained only the central tower and the terrace it commanded. At the foot of the staircase leading up to this, Jane paused thoughtfully for a moment, then she slowly began the ascent.
No, the Palace was not completely deserted, as she had thought. When she approached the top of the staircase, the sound of voices came to her from outside. Very carefully she climbed the topmost steps; then, sheltered in the gloom, she looked out on the terrace lit by the distant glow of the Factory searchlights.
There the whole population of the Palace was assembled. Shuddering with horror, Jane recognized William Ferney, as well as the eight Counsellors whom she had seen with him shortly before. Further on, in two groups, were some of the Black Guard and the nine Negro servants.
Leaning over the parapet, they seemed to be pointing to something in the distance, and they were exchanging cries rather than words, and accompanying them with gestures. What could be happening to enrage them so much?
Suddenly Ferney stood erect and shouted an order at the top of his voice; then, followed by the others, he made for the stairway on whose top steps Jane was sheltering. As she saw, they were armed each with two revolvers strapped to his belt and wrathfully gripping a rifle.
Another second, and her hiding place would be discovered. Then what would become of her in the hands of these violent men? She was lost.
Looking about her, unconsciously seeking for some impossible means of escape, her eyes suddenly fell on a door at the top of the stairway, shutting it off from the terrace. To see and to slam that door, which clanged noisily, were one and the same action. Jane's position was at once completely changed, changed by an instinctive action which she could hardly remember making.
Cries of fury and horrible oaths responded from outside. She had hardly time to shoot the last bolts before the men on the terrace Mere battering violently with their rifle butts on this unexpected obstacle which now barred their way.
Terrified by these vociferations, by these repeated blows, by all the din, Jane stayed where she was, trembling and unable to move. She kept her eyes fixed on the door, every minute expecting it to give way under the attack of these dreadful foes.
But the barrier did not fall; it did not seem to be so much as shaken by the furious blows showered upon it. Gradually Jane recovered her self-control: she realized that, like the outer doors of Factory and Palace, this door was made of thick armour plating able to defy all attacks. There was no reason to fear that Ferney would be able to break it down with the weak forces at his command.
Reassured, she was returning to her brother when she noticed that the stairway, between the bottom floor of the Palace and the terrace, could be barred by five similar doors, Ferney had foreseen everything needed to guard against a surprise attack. His Palace was divided into a number of sections separated by these barriers, which would need to be stormed one after another. Now these precautions could be turned against himself.
Jane bolted these five doors as she had bolted the topmost, and went down to the ground floor.
The Palace windows were protected by massive grilles, as well as by thick metal shutters. Without waiting a moment she went from floor to floor closing all these shutters, down to the very last.
Where did she get the strength to move diose massive plates? She worked feverishly and almost unconsciously, as though she were sleep-walking, but skilfully and quickly. In an hour the task was finished. She was now at the heart of an impregnable block of masonry and steel.
It was only then that she realized how weary she was, her legs beginning to give way under her. Worn out, and her hands bloodstained, she could scarcely get back to her brother.
"Whatever is the matter?" he asked anxiously, alarmed to see her in such a state.
When she had regained her breath she explained what she had done. "Now we are masters of the Palace," she ended triumphantly.
"Isn't there any other way out besides that stair?" enquired her brother, who could hardly believe in such a master stroke.
"There's no other way," Jane declared. "I'm certain of that. William is blockaded on the terrace, and I defy him to get away."
"But why were they up there together?" Lewis wanted to know. "Whatever can have happened?"
But that was something which Jane did not understand. Of all the preparations for defending the Factory she had seen nothing. But it would be easy to find out, by simply glancing outside. Together they climbed to the upper floor, above which was only the terrace, and opened a chink in one of the shutters which Jane had just closed.
Then they could realize the dismay of William Ferney and his companions. Though at their feet theEsplanade lay dark and silent, brilliant lights and a terrible uproar could be made out on the right bank of the Red River. All the huts of the Negroes were ablaze. The centre part of the town, the slaves' quarter, was nothing but an inferno.
The fire was similarly raging among the dwellings of the Civil Body, and up and down stream the extreme-ties of the Merry Fellows' quarter was also beginning to bum.
In the rest of that quarter not yet reached by the fire a frightful din could be heard: cries, oaths, appeals for mercy, confused howlings, mingled with the incessant crackle of the fusilade.
"That must be Tongane," said Jane. "The slaves are in revolt."
"The slaves. . . . Tongane? . . ." Lewis repeated; the words had no meaning for him.
His sister explained the organization of Blackland, so
far as she understood it herself. She summed up briefly how she had found herself in the town, and the events which had led to their being taken prisoner. She told him why she had undertaken that journey, how she had succeeded in demonstrating the innocenceby, now certain, of their brother George, and how, after having linked up with the Mission commanded by le Depute Barsac, she had been abducted along with its remnants.
She pointed out, beyond the Esplanade, the Factory lit up by the blaze of its searchlights, and she told him about her companions who, except for the Negro Tongane, were still sheltered within it. As for Tongane, it was he who had undertaken to rouse the coloured people of Blackland, and the sight which met their eyes proved that he had succeeded. But she had not had the patience to wait, and so she had fled alone, that very evening, in the hope of saving the rest of the garrison. It was thus that she had reached her unfortunate brother. Meantime Tongane had evidently given the prearranged signal, the weapons sent to him, and the revolt unleashed. No doubt William Ferney and his companions had been about to join in the fight when she had so brusquely slammed the door in their face.
"And now what are we going to do?" asked Lewis.
"Wait," Jane replied. "The slaves won't know us, and in all the confusion they won't be able to distinguish between us and anyone else. Besides, we couldn't give them much help, we haven't any weapons."
Lewis having very reasonably pointed out that it would be useful to have them, Jane made another tour of the Palace. The harvest she reaped was not over plentiful. All the weapons, except the ones their owners had on them, were stored in the tower above the terrace, and the most she could find were one solitary rifle and two revolvers, with a handful of cartridges.
When she returned with them, the situation had completely changed. The Negroes had broken out and invaded the Esplanade, on which they were swarming in thousands. In an instant they had stormed the barracks of the Black Guard, whose members they had massacred on the spot and the shelters of the forty heliplanes, from which jets of flame were soon leaping. Drunk with pillage and blood, frantic, they were now taking vengeance for their protracted sufferings, and everything showed that their rage would be satisfied only by the total destruction of the town and the slaughter of the last of its inhabitants.
Watching this spectacle, William Ferney must have been foaming with impotent rage. He could be heard howling and shouting, although the words he was using could not be made out. From the terrace came the crackle of a continual fusillade, and the bullets, striking into the swarming mob of Negroes, were finding many victims.
But the others seemed heedless of this. After burning the quarters of the Black Guard and the heliplane shelters, whose flames were lighting up the Esplanade like gigantic torches, they were attacking the Palace itself and striving, so far vainly, to break down its doors with anything that came to hand.
They were still doing this when sudden bursts of fire sounded from the Red River bank. Having at last succeeded in closing their ranks, the Merry Fellows had crossed the bridge; deploying on the Esplanade, they were firing at random into the mob. Soon hundreds of bodies were littering the ground.
The blacks, clamouring fiercely, were hurling themselves at these new adversaries. For some minutes it was an atrocious battle, an indescribable slaughter. Not having firearms, the Negroes fought hand to hand, wielding their axes, their knives, their pikes, and in the last resort using their teeth. The Merry Fellows replied with bayonet thrusts and shots delivered at point blank range.
The result of the conflict could not long remain in doubt. Superiority in weapons was bound to triumph over that in numbers. Hesitation soon appeared in the depleted ranks of the Negroes, they recoiled, and soon they were fleeing towards the river bank, leaving the Esplanade to the conquerors.
These pursued them hotly in the hope of saving the centre of the Merry Fellows' quarter, which the fire had not yet reached.
At the very moment when they were crossing the bridge, a tremendous explosion roared out. From their vantage point in the Palace, Jane and Lewis could see that it had occurred some distance away, in the remotest part of the Civil Body's quarter. By the light of the fires now raging everywhere, they saw too that part of that quarter and a long stretch of the exterior wall had just been blown up.
Whatever the cause of the explosion, its most obvious result was to open a way for the Negroes to reach the open country. Through the breach thus formed the slaves were seeking refuge and escape from their enemies in the fields and the surrounding undergrowth.
Within a quarter of an hour their pursuers withdrew across the Red River and returned to the Esplanade. Not merely had they no longer any enemies confronting them, they were themselves terror stricken by further explosions following close on the first.
What was the cause of these explosions? Nobody could say. It was however clear that they were occurring not at random but were deliberately planned. The first had taken place on the boundary of the town, in the part of the Civil Body's quarter most remote from the Palace.
Five minutes later two others could be heard to its right and left. Then, after another interval of five minutes, two others sounded nearer the river, but still in the Civil Body's quarter.
It was then that the Merry Fellows who had been following close on the heels of the slaves sought refuge on the Esplanade.
From that time onwards the inexplicable explosions occurred at regular intervals of about half an hour. Every thirty minutes a further uproar was heard, and another section of the Civil Body's quarter was reduced to rubble.
Huddled together on the Esplanade, the white population of Blackland, or at any rate all that remained of it, looked on dazed at these inexplicable happenings. It seemed indeed that a superior and formidable power had undertaken the methodical destruction of the town.
The bandits, formerly so courageous when dealing with those weaker than themselves, were now trembling with fear. Thrusting against the Palace, they strove in vain to break down its door, and they howled execrations against William Ferney, whom they could see on the terrace without understanding why he seemed to have forsaken them. For his part, he was wearing himself out making gestures which they could not interpret, and shouting words which were drowned in the deafening uproar.
Thus the night ended. Day as it broke revealed a frightful scene. The surface of the Esplanade was literally strewn with corpses, to the total of several hundred, blacks and whites mingled together. If the latter had gained the victory, they had paid dearly for it. Of the eight hundred odd men whom yesterday had dwelt in the Civil Body's and the Merry Fellows' quarters, scarcely four hundred remained unscathed. The others had perished as much at the beginning of the revolt, during the first surprise, as on the Esplanade itself when the revolt was over.
As for the slaves, Jane and Lewis could see, from their lofty viewpoint, that they were scattered about the surrounding country. Many were going away. Some were setting off westwards, making straight for the Niger, from which they were separated by an ocean of sand. How many of them would succeed in completing the journey, without water, without food, without weapons? Others, preferring a longer but safer route, were following the course of the Red River, and disappearing towards the south-west.
But the majority of them could not make up their minds to leave Blackland. They could be seen scattered in groups about the fields, gazing stupidly at the town, from which dense columns of smoke were rising, and which the series of explosions was steadily transforming into a heap of ruins.
At that moment a violent explosion sounded on the terrace of the Palace itself. Then, blow after blow, others followed it, the last being followed by a thunderous crash.
Without leaving the window whose partly-drawn shutters had enabled them to watch these dramatic events, Lewis grasped his sister's hand and questioned her with an anxious gaze.
"That's William," she explained, knowing too much about the build of the Palace not to understand the meaning of the explosions. "Now he's trying
to blow down the terrace door with cannon shots."
Jane spoke very calmly. She was watching the position and realizing its significance quite coolly.
"But then," cried Lewis, "they'll be coming down?" He grasped one of the revolvers his sister had found. "We'd better die rather than fall into their hands!"
Jane stopped him with a gesture. "They're not here yet," she said calmly. "There are five other doors like it, and they're placed, especially the three last, so that a cannon couldn't possibly be levelled against them."
As if to prove her right, the explosions had ceased. A heavy rumbling they could hear on the terrace, accompanied by furious shouts, told them that William Femey and his companions were striving to bring their cannon to bear against the second door, and that the operation was not without difficulty.
Soon, moreover, their work was interrupted. Another incident which had just taken place must have attracted their attention, just as it had that of Lewis and Jane Blazon.
The periodical explosions had now culminated in another even more violent and even more destructive than its predecessors. The destructive power which had caused them was now attacking the left bank of the stream, and it was the Factory garden itself which was soaring towards the skies in a burst of earth and stones. When the smoke had cleared away, it could be seen that the garden had been destroyed for much of its length, and that a small portion of the Factory itself had collapsed.
The dust of the explosion was still hanging in the air when a crowd could be seen hastening through the widely-opened Factory door down on to the quay. Jane recognized them at once: they were her companions in captivity, as well as Camaret's workmen, formed up in a compact body with the women and children at its centre. Why were these unfortunate wretches leaving their shelter and making for the Esplanade, where they were sure to encounter the Merry Fellows, still beating furiously but vainly against the Palace door?