Delgado rushed forward and placed himself resolutely, pistol in hand, before the seductive hogsheads. ‘Whoebber drink a drop ob dat rum dis blessed ebenin’,’ he hissed out angrily, ‘before all de Dupuys is lyin’ cold in deir own houses, I shoot him dead here wit dis very pistol!’ But the foremost rioters only laughed louder than before, and one of them even wrenched the pistol suddenly from his leader’s grasp with an unexpected side movement. ‘Look hyar, Mistah Delgado,’ the man said quietly; ‘dis risin’ is all our risin’, an’ we has got to hab voice ourselbes in de partickler way we gwine to manage him. We doan’t gwine away witout de rum, an’ we gwine to break just one little pickanie hogshead.’ At the word, he raised his cutlass above his head, and lunging forward with it like a sword, with all his force, stove in one of the thick cross-pieces at the top of the barrel, and let the liquor dribble out slowly from the chink in a small but continuous trickling stream. Next moment, a dozen black hands were held down to the silent rill like little cups, and a dozen dusky mouths were drinking down the hot new rum, neat and unalloyed, with fierce grimaces of the highest gusto. ‘Ha, dat good!’ ran round the chorus in thirsty approbation: ‘dat warm de naygur’s heart. Us gwine now to kill de buckra in true earnes’.’ Delgado stood by, mad with rage and disappointment, as he saw his followers, one after another, scrambling for handful after handful of the fiery liquor, and watched some of them, the women especially, reeling about foolishly almost at once from the poisonous fumes of the unrefined spirit. He felt in his heart that his chances were slipping rapidly from him, even before the insurrection was well begun, and that it would be impossible for a crowd of half-drunken negroes to preserve the order and discipline which alone would enable them to cope with the all-puissant and regularly drilled white men. But the more he stormed and swore and raved at them, the more did the greedy and uncontrolled negroes, now revelling in the unstinted supply, hold their hands to the undiminished stream, and drink it off by palmfuls with still deeper grunts and groans of internal satisfaction. ‘If it doan’t no hope ob conquer de island,’ the African muttered at last with a wild Guinea oath to Isaac Pourtalès, ‘at anyrate we has time to kill de Dupuys—an’ dat always some satisfaction.’