"Good! The pale Chief really loves Omopoua. What is the Indian to do on arriving in his country?" "Omopoua's brothers have sought shelter, I think, in the neighbourhood of the Artibonite?" "Yes, in the great savannahs to which the French have given the name of Mirebalais." "Good! Omopoua will go and join his friends; he will tell them in what way the filibusters treat the Caribs: he will present his companion to them, and wait." "I will wait: the pale Chief, then, is coming to Haiti?" "Probably," said Montbarts, with a smile of indefinable meaning; "and the proof is, that my engagé will remain with your tribe till my arrival." "Good! I will await the coming of the pale Chief. When am I start?" "This very night. Go down to the beach; go in my name to the owner of the canoe which brought us ashore--here is money," and he gave him several piastres; "tell him that I buy his boat exactly as it stands. You will lay in provisions at the same time, and then wait for your comrade, to whom I have a few words to say--but he will rejoin you soon." "I will go, then; gratitude is in my heart, and not on my lips. On the day when you ask for my life I will give it you, because it is yours, as well as that of all those who love me. Farewell!" And he made a movement to leave the room. "Where are you going?" Montbarts asked him. "I am off; did you not give me leave to go?" "Yes, but you are forgetting something." "What is it?" "The arms I promised you. Take from the rack a fusil for yourself, and four others, which you can dispose of as you please, six cutlasses, six daggers, and six hatchets; when you leave port, on passing the lugger, you will ask Michael the Basque, in my name, for two barrels of gunpowder and two bags of bullets--he will give them to you. Now go, and I wish you all good fortune." The Carib, overcome by this generosity, so simple and so full of grandeur, knelt to the adventurer, and seizing his feet, which he placed on his head, he exclaimed, in a deeply affected voice-- "I pay you homage as to the best of men. I and mine are henceforth and eternally your devoted slaves." He got up, placed on his shoulder the arms which the engagé handed him, and quitted the hatto. For some minutes his footsteps could be heard resounding on the path; but this sound gradually died away, and a complete silence returned. "Now for us two, Olonnais!" Montbarts then said, addressing the engagé. The latter drew nearer. "I am listening, master," he said.