Strange Conflict (39 page)

Instantly the cry was taken up in Creole and bastard French, many expressions in which they could catch and understand. ‘Ghouls!' Grave-robbers!' ‘They have a corpse! ‘It is the
Cochon Gris
!' ‘No, no, it is a White Bocor who makes Zombies.' ‘Stop them!' ‘Tear them to pieces!' ‘Ghouls!' ‘Fiends!' ‘Evil ones from Hell!'

Marie Lou had only a very short start. She had begun to run immediately she had got clear of the hospital and they could see her heading for the harbour fifty yards in advance of them. But the whole street was now roused; everyone was coming out of the houses and shops. Before they had covered a hundred paces she was headed off; two big Negroes started forward from the pavement and ran towards her. She saw that she could not possibly hope to dodge them so she halted, darted back, then hesitated for
a moment, staring wildly round her, until the others came racing up.

All five of them now ran on together, but from one end of the street to the other people were pouring out of buildings and alleyways. Fruit, vegetables and stones were being hurled at them from every direction and they all knew that their plight was desperate. A sea of angry black faces surged up in front of them and it seemed certain that before they reached the harbour they must be torn to pieces by the infuriated mob.

Rex, whose old home was in Virginia, knew all about lynchings in the Southern States. As a boy he had seen a town roused to frenzy by a report that a Negro had raped a white girl. Men and women had sallied out from their homes at night, marched upon the local goal, broken into it and dragged out the cowering Negro. They had kicked, buffeted and clawed him like a pack of beasts until he was half-dead, then soaked his body in petrol and set it on fire. It had been a sickening spectacle and from time to time such outbreaks still occurred. Sometimes the accusation was entirely without foundation, but rumour and arrest were enough; unless the police could spirit the accused away to another town his fate was sealed, and such a fate was the dread of every Negro.

In the present instance the rôles were reversed and a great L crowd were under the impression that they had ample justification for administering mob law to four Whites whom they believed to be making away with the body of a Mulatto girl to turn her into a Zombie. There was no question of the case being fought before the magistrate now. If they were once swept off their feet, within the next few awful moments a hundred hefty boots would break their bones and crush their bodies until they were left five bleeding masses of pulp.

With the body slung over his shoulder Rex was leading, but he had only one hand free and the sudden exertion was causing the wound in his leg to pain him badly. Marie Lou had slipped into the group just behind him so that
Richard and de Richleau ran on either side of her. As the two Negroes came at them Rex sent one of them reeling with a sudden, violent push in the face with his free hand; the Duke tackled the other by a kick on the shin which caused him to yowl, spin round and go sprawling on the cobbles.

For a moment there was a clear space in front of them, but a hail of missiles whizzed at them as they ran. Marie Lou got a lemon in her right eye, which half-blinded her, and a stone tore the knuckles of de Richleau's left hand. A dozen other oddments bounced from their bodies after giving them as many painful buffets.

Behind, to each side and in front of them the crowd were giving tongue; a loud, angry roar filled the whole street. Twenty yards ahead there was a side-turning which was only thinly covered by half a dozen people who were running out of it towards them. Rex swung right and headed for it.

A great Negress with a meat-chopper lifted it to slash at him as he passed, but Rex had been a rugger-player in his Harvard days, and in spite of the handicap of his game leg he swerved with amazing speed just in time to escape the blow. Richard crashed full-tilt into another Negro, knocking him over. Then they were through into the side-turning. But it was much narrower than the street, and scores more people, roused by the shouting, were streaming into it from the teaming courts and alleys which lay behind the docks.

A thick-lipped, yellow-haired Mulatto clawed at de Richleau and managed to drag him back for a moment, but the Duke's fist crunched on the bone of the fellow's nose and he released his hold with a yelp of pain.

Almost blinded by the shower of missiles and deafened by the shouting, they covered another hundred yards and came out into a wider street. Keeping his head, Rex turned left along it, making once more for the harbour; but a great portion of the crowd appeared to have guessed their intention and had taken a short cut for the purpose of heading them off. Fifty yards in front of them, men, women and children were tumbling over one another as they charged helter-skelter out of an alleyway.

The Duke groaned and glanced swiftly back. Another hundred or more shiny-faced people
people were following hard upon their heels. Escape seemed utterly impossible. Within a few moments they must be dragged down. Then, a little way ahead of them on the left side of the road, he caught sight of a small church. There seemed just a chance that they might succeed in obtaining sanctuary there if only they could reach it.

‘The church!' he yelled above the din. ‘Make for the church!' But the way was blocked by half a hundred angry, glistening faces. Richard was still brandishing his automatic. He knew that now had come the time when he must use it.

Whipping up the pistol, he fired two shots above the heads of the crowd. With a shout of panic they cowered away and scattered. The little party of Whites raced on, reached the church and dashed up the steps to its porch.

At that very moment, attracted by the noise, a tall, sandy-haired Roman Catholic priest came hurrying out of the big arched door. He had had no time to discover what the tumult was about and saw only that the mob was pursuing five Europeans, one of whom carried a large sheeted bundle.

Instantly he strode out on to steps and sternly raised his hand, forbidding the rabble to follow its prey further. De Richleau knew then that, temporarily at all events, the Powers of Light had intervened on behalf of himself and his friends by directing them to the church and sending the priest to their assistance at that critical moment.

Without pausing to see the outcome of this check to their pursuers de Richleau thrust the others through the door of the church and ran behind them down the nave. At its end they darted along a side-aisle to a curtained opening and through it into the vestry. There, bruised and breathless, they halted for a moment to get fresh wind.

‘How long d'you think we'll be safe here?' panted Richard.

We daren't stay; even if the priest could hold off the mob,' replied de Richleau quickly. ‘Directly he learns why they're after us he'll insist on our surrendering Philippa's body; and that I refuse to do.'

As he spoke he was already turning the knob of the door
of the vestry, which led into the street. He opened it a crack so that he could peer out.

‘The coast is fairly clear,' he whispered. ‘Come on— quick! We must make the most of the lead we've got, before some of the mob come round to this entrance.'

Slipping out of the door, they covered another hundred yards towards the water-front before they were spotted. A small boy began to yell after them in a piercing treble, and within two minutes the hunt was in full cry again. But now, at the end of the narrow alley down which they were running they could see the masts of the ships in the harbour, less than four hundred yards away.

It sounded as though a thousand feet were pounding upon the hot, shiny cobbles behind them, but the way ahead remained unblocked. Suddenly a man darted from a doorway and, thrusting out his leg, tripped de Richleau, who fell full-length on to a pile of stinking garbage in the gutter.

Richard swung round and hit the man a stinging body-blow, which made him gasp and choke. De Richleau stumbled to his feet; but their leading pursuers were now almost on top of them.

Lifting his automatic, Richard fired again, sending another shot over the heads of the packed mass of shouting men and women.

At the report of the pistol the eyes of the leaders started with terror and rolled in their black faces. Pulling up with a jerk, they tried to scramble away from the menace of the gun into the nearby doorways of the alley. But the charging crowd behind forced them on.

Nevertheless, the single shot had given the hunted one more brief respite. Rex, limping badly now, with Marie Lou beside him, had reached the open and they were running diagonally across the wharf to the steps beside which the launch was moored. De Richleau and Richard pelted after them with every ounce of speed that they could muster.

As they shot out of the end of the alleyway they saw that they still had two hundred paces to cover and that scores of men who had been lounging in the bars and cafes along the waterfront were now tumbling out of them as reinforcements for the mob; and ugly reinforcements, as most of them were sailors, all of whom had knives.

Rex and Marie Lou were both shouting to Simon and as de Richleau and Rex caught up with them Simon suddenly appeared from the cabin of the launch. In an instant he had grasped the situation and was giving swift orders to the three Jamaica boys who formed the crew to be ready to cast off. Then, seizing a hatchet, he jumped ashore to help his friends.

Five hundred superstition-maddened folk were now half-filling the wharf and more were crowding on to it from every street and alley. The angry shouting was so loud that it was difficult to hear individual voices, but above the roar the hard-pressed Whites could catch the French equivalents of ‘Ghouls!' ‘Body-snatchers!' and ‘Zombie! Zombie! Zombie!'

In those last few yards they were almost overcome. A thrown knife pierced the calf of Richard's leg and as he stopped for an instant to pull it out he was grabbed by two burly stevedores. De Richleau was seized by a third, and Marie Lou fell at Simon's feet. But having reached the wharf-edge Rex just pitched the body into the launch and swung round to their help. With those mighty fists, like ten-pound weights, he laid out right and left about him until he had cleared a little space and both Richard's and the Duke's attackers lay writhing on the ground from his hammer-blows.

Marie Lou wriggled up again and jumped on to the fore-deck of the launch, where one of the Jamaica boys had already untied the painter. Another was at the wheel and had the engine running. The third had gone to Simon's assistance and with a boathook was striking out at the mob. ‘Theirs not to reason why …' They were British subjects and Jamaicans who despised the riff-raff of the Negro Republic, and they gave loyal service to their white employers.

Somehow the rest of the party freed themselves from the scores of hands that clutched at them and strove to drag them back. Still striking, kicking and struggling, they fumbled into the boat. The moment they were all on board the launch shot away. Three Haitians, who had leapt on to the deck at the last moment, were attacked simultaneously and heaved overboard into the water.

But the chase was not yet over. While the frustrated
crowd, a thousand strong, now lined the whole wharfside shrieking imprecations at them, hundreds more were piling into water craft of every description to continue the pursuit, and several boats, which were already manned in the harbour, altered course to try to head them off.

In the next few minutes the Jamacian boy at the wheel performed miracles of steersmanship as he dodged one craft after another, but at the mouth of the harbour it was only by Richard's firing two more shots from his automatic across her bows that they prevented a customs launch, officered by a Negro in an admiral's uniform which had already done fifty years' service, from ramming them.

At last they were out in the open sea, and although thirty or forty boats of varying sizes were strung out behind them they felt reasonably confident that their own powerful craft could outdistance the others. As they tended their most serious hurts they saw their pursuers gradually dropping behind, but de Richleau's face was still grave. The Haitian Republic possessed a small Navy, consisting of coastal-patrol gunboats. These were almost obsolete but they were armed after a fashion, and in view of the major riot which they had brought about it was quite on the cards that one of these might be sent after them.

When Rex had picked up Philippa's body and carried it into the cabin, the Duke said: ‘We must lose no time in burying her. Marie Lou had better attend to that nasty wound in Richard's leg, on deck. They can keep watch and see that the Jamaica boys don't come down. You others can stay here and give me a hand in what I have to do.'

As Richard and Marie Lou left the cabin the rest of the party took the body, unwrapped it from the sheet and laid it out on the floor. De Richleau then went into the tiny gallery which formed the forepart of the cabin and returned with a skewer, a hammer and a long cook's-knife. Placing the skewer over Philippa's heart, he murmured some words that the others did not understand, and gave it two swift blows with the hammer, which drove it right through her chest.

‘The next part of the business is rather horrible,' he said in a low voice, ‘so you needn't look if you'd rather not.' But Simon and Rex were so fascinated by the macabre
scene that they remained staring down at the blistered, unresisting corpse.

De Richleau then took up the sharp cook's-knife and, murmuring more words in an ancient tongue, bore down on it with all his weight until it had severed Philippa's head from her trunk.

To Simon's horror, as the head was severed he saw the full lips draw back into a smile; then the eyes flickered open for a second, and he distinctly caught the whispered words: ‘
Merci, Monsieur
.'

The effect of that dead face smiling and the voice from beyond the grave was so utterly terrifying that he fainted.