The commandeurs fell one by one into the hands of the horde, but Prosper Cambray and another two men ran to the storerooms of the big house with weapons and ammunition to defend themselves for several hours. They were confident that the fire would attract the marechaussee or the soldiers patrolling the region. The Negroes' attack had the fury and speed of a typhoon; it would last a couple of hours and then they would disperse. The overseer found it strange that the house was not occupied; he thought that Valmorain had in anticipation prepared an underground refuge and was crouching down there with his son, Tete, and the little girl. Cambray left his men and went to the office, which was always kept locked, but found it open. He did not know the combination to the safe and was ready to blow it apart-no one would know later who stole the gold-but it was open as well. Then came the first suspicion that Valmorain had fled without telling him. Damned coward! he exclaimed, furious. To save his miserable skin he had abandoned the plantation. With no time to bemoan that, he joined the others just as the uproar of the attack was upon them.
Cambray heard the whinnying of horses and barking of dogs, and could distinguish those of his murderous mastiffs; they were hoarser and fiercer. He knew that before his valiant dogs perished they would do away with several victims. The house was surrounded; the attackers had invaded the patios and were running over the garden; not one of Valmorain's precious orchids was left. The overseer heard them in the gallery, breaking down doors, climbing through windows, and demolishing anything they found before them, gutting the French furniture, ripping down Dutch tapestries, emptying Spanish chests, splintering Chinese screens, shattering porcelain, German clocks, golden cages, Roman statuary, and Venetian mirrors-everything that had been acquired by Violette Boisier. And when they tired of ransacking the house they began to look for the family. Cambray and the two commandeurs had stacked sacks, barrels, and furniture against the door of the storage rooms, and they began shooting between the iron bars that protected the small windows. Only wood boards separated them from the rebels, audacious with freedom and indifferent to bullets. In the early dawn light they saw several of them fall so close by they could smell them despite the fetid smoke of the burned cane. Others fell, and more came, stepping over bodies, before Cambray and his men could reload. They heard the blows against the door, the thudding, the wood shaken by a hurricane of hatred that had been accumulating strength across the Caribbean for a hundred years. Ten minutes later the big house was burning like an enormous bonfire. The rebellious slaves waited on the patio, and when the commandeurs ran out from the flames they caught them alive. They were not, however, able to inflict the torture Prosper Cambray deserved, because he chose to stick the barrel of his pistol into his mouth and blow his head off.
During that same time Gambo and his small group were climbing, clinging to rocks, tree trunks, roots, and vines; they crossed precipices and waded through water up to their waists. Gambo had not exaggerated; it was a route not for horsemen but for monkeys. In that profound greenery there were sudden brushstrokes of color: the yellow and orange beak of a toucan, the iridescent feathers of parrots and macaws, tropical flowers dripping from the branches. There was water everywhere, rivulets, pools, rain, crystalline cascades crossed with rainbows falling from the sky and disappearing into dense masses of gleaming ferns below. Tete wet a kerchief and tied it around her head to bandage the eye turned purple by Valmorain's slap. To prevent a confrontation between the two men, she told Gambo that an insect had bitten her eyelid. Valmorain took off his water-soaked boots because his feet were nothing but raw flesh, and Gambo laughed when he saw them, not understanding how the white man could walk through life on those soft, rosy feet that looked like skinned rabbits. After a few steps Valmorain had to put the boots back on. He could not carry Maurice any longer. The child walked some stretches holding his father's hand, and others on Gambo's shoulders, holding onto the hard clump of his hair.
Several times they had to hide from rebels wandering in the area. Once Gambo left the others in a cave and went alone to meet a small group he knew from having been with them in Boukman's camp. One of the men was wearing a necklace of human ears, some dry as leather, others fresh and pink. They shared their provisions with him, cooked sweet potatoes and a few strips of smoked goat meat, and rested a while, commenting on the vicissitudes of the war and rumors about a new chief, Toussaint. They said that he did not seem human; astute and solitary, he had the heart of a jungle dog. He was indifferent to the temptations of alcohol, women, and medals other chiefs strove for; he didn't sleep, he ate only fruit, and he could spend two days and nights on horseback. He never raised his voice, but people trembled in his presence. He was a docteur-feuilles, a leaf doctor, and seer; he knew how to decipher nature's messages, the signs in the stars, and men's most secret intentions; that was how he avoided betrayal and ambushes. At dusk, just as it began to grow cool, the men said good-bye. It took Gambo a while to find his way back because he had gone some distance from the cave, but finally he rejoined the others, who were weak from thirst and heat but had not dared step outside or look for water. Gambo led them to a nearby pool where they could drink their fill but had to ration the sparse provisions.
Valmorain's feet were open sores in his boots; the shooting pain ran up his legs, and he wept with frustration; he was tempted to lie down and die but kept going for Maurice's sake. At dusk of the second day they saw a pair of naked men armed with machetes; they wore no adornment other than a strip of leather around the waist to hold a knife. The party was able to hide among some ferns where they waited for more than an hour, until the men were lost in the luxuriant growth. Gambo went to a palm tree whose crest rose several meters above the vegetation; he climbed the slim trunk, grasping the ridges in the bark, and pulled off a few coconuts that fell noiselessly among the ferns. The children drank the milk and shared the delicate pulp. He told them that he had seen the plain; Le Cap was nearby. They spent the night beneath the trees and saved the rest of their few provisions for the next day. Maurice and Rosette slept curled together, watched by Valmorain, who had aged a thousand years. He felt as if he were bits and pieces-he had lost his honor, his manhood, his soul, and had been reduced to a mere animal, flesh and suffering, a bloody hunk of meat following, like a dog, an accursed black man who was fornicating with his slave a few steps away. He could hear them that night, as on previous nights; they were not discreet out of decency or out of fear of him. He clearly heard their moans of pleasure, their sighs of desire, the invented words, the suffocated laughter. Again and again, they copulated like beasts; such desire and energy were not normal for human beings. The master wept with humiliation. He imagined Tete's familiar body, her walker's legs, her firm rump, her narrow waist, her generous breasts, her smooth skin, soft, sweet, wet with sweat, with desire, with sin, with insolence and provocation. He seemed to see her face at those moments, the half-closed eyes, the soft lips giving and receiving, the daring tongue, the dilated nostrils sniffing the scent of that man. And despite all that, despite the torment of his feet, of his immeasurable fatigue, his trampled pride and fear of dying, Valmorain grew hard.
"Tomorrow we will leave the white man and his son on the plains. From there all he has to do is walk straight ahead," Gambo announced to Tete between kisses in the darkness.