Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [41]
Maillart caught himself breathing through an open mouth. He had seen Toussaint take out the feather pillow only once or twice before; in rides of normal duration he didn’t bother with the cushion. What it implied was that he meant to remain in the saddle for several days straight.
“N’alé!” he said. A short sharp bark: Let’s go. And now, with a twirl of his left hand and squeeze of his heels, he was already gone.
5
Only two days since they’d made their first landfall, but each so wearily the same. As if in doldrums, the Jean-Jacques lay at anchor among the other ships of the French fleet, off the rocks of Point Samana. Captain Guizot climbed out of the forward hatchway to greet the same brilliant tropical dawn, a land breeze wafting toward him a scent of green jungle. On a coil of rope by the forward mast, that unfortunate sailor sat, staring morosely at the brown-stained bandage wrapping the stump of his left wrist. The day before, he and one of his fellows had conceived the idea to lower a small boat beside the ship and wash the maggots off the most fetid pieces of salt meat left in the bottoms of the barrels. But when he dipped the first piece in the water, his arm came back without the hand. His astonished shout brought half the crew of the Jean-Jacques gaping to the rails. His companion in the boat had saved his life by slapping on a rag tourniquet which stopped the spurting blood until the surgeon could reach him.
Well, it was quite possible the man would still die. Such grave wounds festered easily in the tropics—so at least Guizot had been told. The truth was that he had no experience of any real campaign before this one. He and Daspir were both comparatively recent recruits, and though they could hold their own in gambling and whoring, drinking and boasting, they knew little more of a soldier’s life than that. Guizot looked the other way as he passed the handless sailor. But Placide Louverture was standing nearer to the bow, gazing calmly out toward the surf beating on the shoreline, and Guizot did not wish to approach him either. He stopped and looked down at the water, its opaque surface glinting with the progress of the sun. Somewhere invisibly below, the same shark must be turning, in its belly the lost hand of the sailor clenching and loosening like seaweed as the flesh was loosened from the bones.
Presently Daspir came to join Guizot where he stood, yawning and stretching and scratching his untidy hair. Then he turned his nose to the wind and pointed, trembling, almost like a hunting dog.
“Oranges,” he said, and faced Guizot. “Do you not smell oranges?”
“No,” Guizot said, ignoring Daspir’s hopeful half-smile. “No, I smell nothing.” Although there certainly was some tantalizing odor on the breeze. But Guizot was weary and anxious and bored. So was Daspir, so were they all. It was the tiresomeness of waiting for action or even the news that there would be none. What they really seemed to be waiting for was the regathering of the scattered ships of the fleet; the squadron including the vessel of Captain-General Leclerc had arrived off Point Samana just yesterday. Leclerc had sent one small boat into shore; it brought back the rumor that Toussaint Louverture was supposed to be in Spanish Santo Domingo—perhaps very near, then, to this point where the Jean-Jacques rode at anchor.
“We might execute our pact, no?” Daspir turned to Guizot once again, the smile ingratiating. “If only we could get on shore.”
“Well, yes,” Guizot said, struggling for a more amiable tone. “I know I’m ready for it.” As he spoke, he did feel some returning flutter of the spirit that had moved him to propose that the four of them ought to be force enough to arrest the rebel Toussaint, though at this hour of the morning there was no rum or brandy in him to give it fire.
Daspir looked dreamily toward the shoreline, his soft lips working— sucking the pith