The negroes around, caught with the contagious enthusiasm of Delgado’s voice and mutely eloquent gesture, flung up their own dusky hands, cutlasses and all, with the self-same wild and expressive pantomime, and cried aloud, in a scarcely stifled undertone: ‘De Lard delibber dem, de Lard delibber dem to Louis Delgado.’ The old African gazed around him complacently for a second at the goodly muster of armed followers, to the picked men among whom Isaac Pourtalès was already busily distributing the pistols and the cartridges. ‘Are you ready, me fren’s?’ he asked again, after a short pause. And, like a deep murmur, the answer rang unanimously from that great tumultuous black mass: ‘Praise de Lard, sah, we ready, we ready!’ ‘Den march!’ Delgado cried, in the loud tone of a commanding officer; and suiting the action to the word, the whole mob turned after him silently, along the winding path that led down by tortuous twists from the clump of cabbage-palms to the big barn-like Orange Grove trash-houses. With their naked feet and their cat-like tread, the negroes marched along far more silently than white men could ever have done, toward the faint lights that gleamed fitfully beyond the gully. If possible, Delgado would have preferred to lead them straight to Orange Grove house, for his resentment burnt fiercest of all against the Dupuy family, and he wished at least, whatever else happened, to make sure of massacring that one single obnoxious household. But it was absolutely necessary to turn first to the trash-houses and the factory, for rumours of some impending trouble had already vaguely reached the local authorities. The two constables of the district stood there on guard, and the few faithful and trustworthy plantation hands were with them there, in spite of Mr Dupuy’s undisguised ridicule, half expecting an insurgent attack that very evening. It would never do to leave the enemy thus in the rear, ready either to attack them from behind, or to bear down the news and seek for aid at Port-of-Spain. Delgado’s plan was therefore to carry each plantation entire as he went, without allowing time to the well-affected negroes to give the alarm to the whites in the next one. But he feared greatly the perils and temptations of the factory for his unruly army. ‘Whatebber else you do, me fren’s,’ the old African muttered more than once, turning round beseechingly to his ragged black followers, ‘doan’t drink de new rum, an’ doan’t set fire to de buckra trash-houses.’