And while his brave sons Adelbert and Gottfried and the three stout-hearted servants likewise reached for their arms, he said: “Our nephew Gustav saved more than one of our lives, now it’s up to us to do the same for him.” Whereupon he hoisted his wife, who had meanwhile regained consciousness, back onto the mule; as an added precaution, he had Nanky taken as a sort of hostage with his hands bound; sent his wife and little children and the maids, under the armed guard of his thirteen-year-old son Ferdinand back to the seagull pond; and after sounding out Toni, who had herself taken up helmet and sword, as to the strength of the Negro’s force and their positioning in the courtyard, and having assured her that he would do his best to spare Hoango as well as her mother, bravely putting himself in the hands of God, taking the lead of his little troop, he set off after Toni back to the plantation.

As soon as the group slipped through the rear gate, Toni pointed out to Monsieur Strömli the room in which Hoango and Babekan slept; and while Strömli and his people entered the house without making a sound and seized all of the Negroes’ guns, Toni slunk off to the stable in which Nanky’s five-year-old half-brother Seppy slept. For Nanky and Seppy, bastard sons of old Hoango, were both very dear to him, particularly the latter, whose mother had recently died; and since, if they succeeded in freeing the young captive, the return to the seagull pond and their escape from there to Port au Prince – as she resolved to join them – would still involve considerable risk, she reasoned, not incorrectly, that the two boys would come in very handy as hostages in their likely pursuit by the Negroes. She succeeded, unseen, in lifting the boy out of his bed and carrying him in her arms, half-asleep, half-awake, back to the main house. Meanwhile, Monsieur Strömli and his men managed as stealthily as possible to enter Hoango’s quarters; but instead of finding him and Babekan in bed, as Strömli expected, the two, roused by the sound, stood there, albeit half-naked and helpless, in the middle of the room. Musket raised, Monsieur Strömli cried out: “Yield or you’re dead!” But in lieu of a reply, Hoango tore a pistol from off the wall and fired, strafing Monsieur Strömli’s head. Hereupon, Strömli’s men fell upon the black man in a fury; following a second shot that pierced the shoulder of a servant, Hoango was wounded in the hand by the slash of a saber, and the two of them, Babekan and he, were shoved to the floor and bound tightly with ropes to the trestle of a big table. Awakened in the meantime by the sound of shots, Hoango’s Negroes, more than twenty in number, staggered out of their stalls, and hearing old Babekan screaming in the house, came running to get their weapons. Monsieur Strömli, whose wound was of no significance, stationed his people at the windows and had them fire, attempting in vain to hold off the onslaught; oblivious to the fact that two of their number already lay dead in the yard, the Negroes were just then fetching axes and crowbars to break open the door that Monsieur Strömli had bolted shut, when shaking and trembling, Toni burst into Hoango’s room with Seppy in her arms. Monsieur Strömli, who found their arrival most fortuitous, tore the boy from Toni’s arms; drawing his hunting knife, he turned to Hoango and swore to kill the boy on the spot if Hoango did not call out to his men to cease and desist. After a moment’s hesitation, Hoango, whose grip was broken by the blow of the blade on three fingers of his fighting hand, and who, if he chose to resist, would have forfeited his own life, motioned for them to raise him off the floor, muttering: “Alright.” Led by Monsieur Strömli to the window, and waving with a handkerchief in his left hand, Hoango called to the Negroes: “It’s no use, leave the door and return to your quarters!” Whereupon things quieted down a bit; on Monsieur Strömli’s bidding, Hoango sent one of the Negro guards captured in the house out to repeat the order to the hesitant, arguing stragglers remaining in the yard; and as little as they grasped of the situation, they were obliged to heed the words of this delegated messenger, and so the blacks gave up their attempt to break open the door, and one by one returned, albeit grumbling and cursing, to their quarters. Ordering Seppy’s hands to be bound then and there in front of his father, Monsieur Strömli said: “My intention is none other than to set free the officer, my nephew, and if we encounter no further obstacles along the way and succeed in safely making our escape to Port au Prince, you will have nothing to fear for your own life and that of your children, whom I will return to you forthwith.” Toni approached Babekan to bid farewell, reaching her hand out to her mother with a burst of emotion she could not suppress, but the old woman shoved her away. She called her daughter a contemptible traitress, and twisting on the trestle, hissed: “God’s wrath will mow you down before you manage to bring off your filthy deed!” Toni replied: “I did not betray you; I am a white woman, and betrothed to the young man you hold captive; I belong to the race of those with whom you are at war, and will answer to God alone for taking their side.” Hereupon Monsieur Strömli had one of his men stand guard beside Hoango, whom he had bound again and tied to the doorpost; he had the servant, who lay unconscious on the floor with a broken shoulder blade, picked up and carried out; and after repeating to Hoango that he could send for both boys, Nanky and Seppy, in a few days time at the French outpost in Sainte Luce, he turned to Toni, who, overcome by mixed emotions, could not stop crying, heaped as she was with the curses of Babekan and old Hoango, took her hand and led her out of the room.

In the meantime, having finished the main fight, firing from the windows, Monsieur Strömli’s sons, Adelbert and Gottfried, hastened, on their father’s orders, to the room in which their cousin Gustav was being held prisoner, and managed, despite stiff resistance, to overwhelm the two blacks who guarded him. One of them lay dead on the floor of the room; the other dragged himself with a bad bullet wound out into the corridor. The brothers, the elder of whom had suffered a light wound to the thigh, untied their dear kinsman; they hugged and kissed him, and handing him pistols and a sword, jubilantly urged him to follow them to the front room, in which, seeing as the battle was won, Monsieur Strömli was calling them all to fall back. Raising himself half-upright in bed, Gustav pressed their hands and smiled without a word; but his mind was clearly elsewhere and instead of reaching for the pistols they held out to him he raised his right hand and stroked his forehead with an expression of unspeakable grief. Sitting themselves down beside him, the youths asked: “What’s the matter?” But no sooner did Gustav wrap his arms around them and silently rest his head on Gottfried’s shoulder, prompting Adelbert, fearing that his cousin was about to faint, to think of fetching him a drink of water, than Toni entered the room with Seppy in her arms, led by Monsieur Strömli. At the sight of her, Gustav went white in the face; rising from bed, he gripped his cousins’ shoulders as though he were about to fall; and before the youths fathomed what he intended to do with the pistol that he now took from their hands, seething with rage, he had already pressed the trigger and sent a bullet flying at Toni. The shot struck her square in the breast; and with a broken syllable of pain, she managed to take several steps forward, and handing the boy to Monsieur Strömli, sank to her knees before him; he hurled the pistol at her and shoved her away with his foot, calling her a filthy whore, then fell back down in bed. “You madman!” Monsieur Strömli and his two sons cried out in unison. The youths rushed to the girl, and picking her up, called for one of the old servants, who on several previous desperate occasions in the course of their journey had already delivered first aid; but with one hand pressed to the mortal wound, the girl gently pushed them from her, and stammered with a rattle in her throat: “Tell him . . . !” pointing to the one who shot her, and again: “Tell him . . . !” “What should we tell him?” asked Monsieur Strömli, as the effort of dying robbed her of the strength to speak. Adelbert and Gottfried leapt up and cried out to the inconceivably miserable murderer: “Do you know that this girl saved your life; that she loves you and that it had been her intention to forsake family, house and home, and escape with you to Port au Prince?” They howled in his ears “Gustav!” and asked: “Can’t you hear us?” and shook him and grabbed his hair, as he lay still and unresponsive on the bed. Then he sat up. He cast a look at the girl rolling in the blood he’d spilled; and the anger that had sparked this terrible act naturally gave way to compassion. Soaking his handkerchief with a flood of hot tears, Monsieur Strömli asked: “Oh, you poor miserable man, why did you do it?” Once again rising from bed, wiping the sweat from his brow, eying the girl, Gustav replied: “The vixen, she tied me up at night and handed me over to the Negro Hoango!” “Dear God,” cried Toni, reaching her hand out to him with an indescribable expression on her face, “I tied you, my best beloved, because .