“Le jour de gloire est arrivé! Aux armes! aux armes! pour Liberté!”[20] Consternation followed the feast—each man grasped his arms—into the midst of the company rushed a negro covered with dust, panting with heat. He sought his master. Pale with fear, and excited with wine, he received him on the point of his sword. As the life and blood flowed, he gasped, “Oh, master! Oh, master!” Murmurs of disapprobation filled the room, but it was too late—the hour had come! the slaves had risen. This poor creature had wished to save the man that owned him. The rebellion broke out on the plantation of Noe, nine miles from Cap François. At midnight the slaves sought the refiner and his apprentice, and hewed them in pieces—the overseer they shot. They then proceeded to the house of Mr. Clement—he was killed by his postillon. They proceeded from plantation to plantation, murdering the whites; their ranks swelled by crowds of scarred and desperate men, who had nothing to lose but life; and life with slavery was not so sweet as revenge. Everywhere, they applied the torch to the sugar mills (those bastiles, consecrated to the rites of the lash and to forced labor, dumb with fear), and to the cane fields, watered with sweat and blood. Towards morning, crowds of whites came pouring into Cap François, pale, terror-stricken, blood-stained! Men, women, and children, found the day of judgment was come—none knew what to do—all was confusion—the signal gun boomed through the darkness, warning of danger—and every man stood to his arms. The inhabitants of the city were paralyzed with fear. They barred their doors and locked up their house-slaves. The only living objects in the streets were a few soldiers marching to their posts. Panic ruled the hour. The Assembly sat through the night. Touzard was sent out to attack the negroes, but was driven back. Guns were mounted, and the streets barricaded. The morning dawned, and with the rising sun came rising courage. “It is nothing!” said some—“Burn and hang a few negroes, and all will go on as before.” The exasperation against the mulattoes, who were charged with having fomented the rising, resulted in hatred, insult, bloodshed, and murder, in and around Cap François; and a butchery was only stayed by the vigorous opposition of the governor. Whatever negroes were seized were tortured and massacred. “Frequently,” says Lacroix, “did the faithful slave perish by the hands of an irritated master, whose confidence he sought.” The maddened negroes had tasted blood. They seized Mr. Blen, an officer of police, nailed him alive to one of the gates of his plantation, and chopped off his limbs with an axe.