Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [202]
The momentum of the French charge had already breached the third entrenchment, and it appeared that the rebels were now in full flight. Rochambeau did a dance of rage below the tremendous gash the exploded magazine had opened in the wall of the ravine. He tore off his shako, hurled it down, kicked it away from him, then ran to jump on it. Breathless now, he stooped to pick it up, and while he knocked out the dents and brushed off the dirt, he kept urging his men forward with quick sharp jerks of his jaw.
The doctor was standing, stretching his back and watching the sun’s rim push above the ridge line to the east, when he saw Guiaou and Guerrier launch themselves from that stone doorway and land rolling on the gravel floor of the ravine. Within the vacant doorway something burned almost as bright as the sun and then with a deafening, flattening boom the whole cliff blew up, scattering tree trunks, boulders, tubes of cannon, the shattered bodies of the French artillerymen. The doctor came to himself plastered belly-down on the gravel, eye to eye with Fontelle and Paulette, who’d had the same reaction as he. When he got to his feet, he saw that the French charge had already slammed into the third entrenchment.
“Retreat!” That was Placide’s voice, echoing an order. The doctor looked about for Toussaint, but only found Guiaou and Guerrier, flying back to get their horses. He set Paulette and Fontelle to loading the donkeys. For the last two hours he had been sending the walking wounded down the ravine in the direction of Périsse, but those who couldn’t walk would have to be left where they were, and some of their supplies would be abandoned too; there was no more time. The doctor saw Paulette and Fontelle mounted and scrambled up onto his mule.
Sixty yards lower in the ravine, Monpoint had opened a gap in his line of cavalry for the passage of Toussaint’s surviving troops, and the doctor kept his exhausted eyes forward as he passed through, behind the two women. No use to look back at the legless men lying on the strand, stretching out their hands to him, or anyone else who passed. The regular troops were marching in reasonably good order, but the retreat of the field hands looked more like a rout. The doctor was too tired now to feel fear, and with the rising sun warm between his shoulder blades he even dozed off a time or two as the mule took him rocking down the gorge. But when they’d emerged into the cactus-scattered desert near Habitation Périsse, he roused himself and looked back once and saw how the sky was speckled with dark vulture’s wings, spiraling and beginning to settle beneath the bushy palm crowns sprouting from Ravine à Couleuvre.
When Placide overtook Toussaint at Périsse, his father had already dismounted, beside a tall cactus hedge that lined the road which led through Marie Louise. Toussaint was whipping the air with his cane and shouting at Magny to stop the flight of the field hands, turn them, bring them back. The regular troops had already rallied here, and Labarre and several other junior officers were drawing them back up into their ranks.
“Listen.” Toussaint let his cane fall into the pale dust and snatched a musket from Guerrier. “Listen to me. We have no retreat. Don’t look behind you—we are in the desert, the sea at our back. What the enemy brings is death undying. They will send us as zombi into the fields again. Will you accept that?”
“Never!” It was Monpoint’s voice ringing out. “We will defeat them here or die.”
Toussaint nodded, brandishing the musket. Labarre and Magny took up the cry; Placide heard it tearing out of his own throat: “Victoire ou la mort!” By the third time all the men were shouting it: Victory