Mr. Baptiste wandered in and out among the groups of men, exchanging a friendly salutation here and there. He looked the picture of woe-begone misery.
"h.e.l.lo, Mr. Baptiste," cried a big, brawny Irishman, "sure an" you look, as if you was about to be hanged."
"Ah, mon Dieu," said Mr. Baptiste, "dose fruit ship be ruined fo" dees strik"."
"d.a.m.n the fruit!" cheerily replied the Irishman, artistically disposing of a mouthful of tobacco juice. "It ain"t the fruit we care about, it"s the cotton."
"Hear! hear!" cried a dozen l.u.s.ty comrades.
Mr. Baptiste shook his head and moved sorrowfully away.
"Hey, by howly St. Patrick, here"s that little fruit-eater!" called the centre of another group of strikers perched on cotton-bales.
"h.e.l.lo! Where--" began a second; but the leader suddenly held up his hand for silence, and the men listened eagerly.
It might not have been a sound, for the levee lay quiet and the mules on the cotton-drays dozed languidly, their ears pitched at varying acute angles. But the practiced ears of the men heard a familiar sound stealing up over the heated stillness.
"Oh--ho--ho--humph--humph--humph--ho--ho--ho--oh--o--o--humph!"
Then the faint rattle of chains, and the steady thump of a machine pounding.
If ever you go on the levee you"ll know that sound, the rhythmic song of the stevedores heaving cotton-bales, and the steady thump, thump, of the machine compressing them within the hold of the ship.
Finnegan, the leader, who had held up his hand for silence, uttered an oath.
"Scabs! Men, come on!"
There was no need for a further invitation. The men rose in sullen wrath and went down the levee, the crowd gathering in numbers as it pa.s.sed along. Mr. Baptiste followed in its wake, now and then sighing a mournful protest which was lost in the roar of the men.
"Scabs!" Finnegan had said; and the word was pa.s.sed along, until it seemed that the half of the second District knew and had risen to investigate.
"Oh--ho--ho--humph--humph--humph--oh--ho--ho--oh--o--o--humph!"
The rhythmic chorus sounded nearer, and the cause manifested itself when the curve of the levee above the French Market was pa.s.sed. There rose a White Star steamer, insolently settling itself to the water as each consignment of cotton bales was compressed into her hold.
"n.i.g.g.e.rs!" roared Finnegan wrathily.
"n.i.g.g.e.rs! n.i.g.g.e.rs! Kill "em, scabs!" chorused the crowd.
With muscles standing out like cables through their blue cotton shirts, and sweat rolling from glossy black skins, the Negro stevedores were at work steadily labouring at the cotton, with the rhythmic song swinging its cadence in the hot air. The roar of the crowd caused the men to look up with momentary apprehension, but at the over-seer"s rea.s.suring word they bent back to work.
Finnegan was a t.i.tan. With livid face and bursting veins he ran into the street facing the French Market, and uprooted a huge block of paving stone. Staggering under its weight, he rushed back to the ship, and with one mighty effort hurled it into the hold.
The delicate poles of the costly machine tottered in the air, then fell forward with a crash as the whole iron framework in the hold collapsed.
"d.a.m.n ye," shouted Finnegan, "now yez can pack yer cotton!"
The crowd"s cheers at this changed to howls, as the Negroes, infuriated at their loss, for those costly machines belong to the labourers and not to the ship-owners, turned upon the mob and began to throw brickbats, pieces of iron, chunks of wood, anything that came to hand.
It was pandemonium turned loose over a turgid stream, with a malarial sun to heat the pa.s.sions to fever point.
Mr. Baptiste had taken refuge behind a bread-stall on the outside of the market. He had taken off his cap, and was weakly cheering the Negroes on.
"Bravo!" cheered Mr. Baptiste.
"Will yez look at that d.a.m.ned fruit-eatin" Frinchman!" howled McMahon.
"Cheerin" the n.i.g.g.e.rs, are you?" and he let fly a brickbat in the direction of the bread-stall.
"Oh, mon Dieu, mon Dieu!" wailed the bread-woman.
Mr. Baptiste lay very still, with a great ugly gash in his wrinkled brown temple. Fishmen and vegetable marchands gathered around him in a quick, sympathetic ma.s.s. The individual, the concrete bit of helpless humanity, had more interest for them than the vast, vague fighting mob beyond.
The noon-hour pealed from the brazen throats of many bells, and the numerous hoa.r.s.e whistles of the steam-boats called the unheeded luncheon-time to the levee workers. The war waged furiously, and groans of the wounded mingled with curses and roars from the combatants.
"Killed instantly," said the surgeon, carefully lifting Mr. Baptiste into the ambulance.
Tramp, tramp, tramp, sounded the militia steadily marching down Decatur Street.
"Whist! do yez hear!" shouted Finnegan; and the conflict had ceased ere the yellow river could reflect the sun from the polished bayonets.
You remember, of course, how long the strike lasted, and how many battles were fought and lives lost before the final adjustment of affairs. It was a fearsome war, and many forgot afterwards whose was the first life lost in the struggle,--poor little Mr. Baptiste"s, whose body lay at the Morgue unclaimed for days before it was finally dropped unnamed into Potter"s Field.
A CARNIVAL JANGLE
There is a merry jangle of bells in the air, an all-pervading sense of jester"s noise, and the flaunting vividness of royal colours. The streets swarm with humanity,--humanity in all shapes, manners, forms, laughing, pushing, jostling, crowding, a ma.s.s of men and women and children, as varied and a.s.sorted in their several individual peculiarities as ever a crowd that gathered in one locality since the days of Babel.
It is Carnival in New Orleans; a brilliant Tuesday in February, when the very air gives forth an ozone intensely exhilarating, making one long to cut capers. The buildings are a blazing ma.s.s of royal purple and golden yellow, national flags, bunting, and decorations that laugh in the glint of the Midas sun. The streets are a crush of jesters and maskers, Jim Crows and clowns, ballet girls and Mephistos, Indians and monkeys; of wild and sudden flashes of music, of glittering pageants and comic ones, of befeathered and belled horses; a dream of colour and melody and fantasy gone wild in an effervescent bubble of beauty that shifts and changes and pa.s.ses kaleidoscope-like before the bewildered eye.
A bevy of bright-eyed girls and boys of that uncertain age that hovers between childhood and maturity, were moving down Ca.n.a.l Street when there was a sudden jostle with another crowd meeting them. For a minute there was a deafening clamour of shouts and laughter, cracking of the whips, which all maskers carry, a jingle and clatter of carnival bells, and the masked and unmasked extricated themselves and moved from each other"s paths. But in the confusion a tall Prince of Darkness had whispered to one of the girls in the unmasked crowd: "You"d better come with us, Flo; you"re wasting time in that tame gang. Slip off, they"ll never miss you; we"ll get you a rig, and show you what life is."
And so it happened, when a half-hour pa.s.sed, and the bright-eyed bevy missed Flo and couldn"t find her, wisely giving up the search at last, she, the quietest and most bashful of the lot, was being initiated into the mysteries of "what life is."
Down Bourbon Street and on Toulouse and St. Peter Streets there are quaint little old-world places where one may be disguised effectually for a tiny consideration. Thither, guided by the shapely Mephisto and guarded by the team of jockeys and ballet girls, tripped Flo. Into one of the lowest-ceiled, dingiest, and most ancient-looking of these shops they stepped.
"A disguise for the demoiselle," announced Mephisto to the woman who met them. She was small and wizened and old, with yellow, flabby jaws, a neck like the throat of an alligator, and straight, white hair that stood from her head uncannily stiff.
"But the demoiselle wishes to appear a boy, un pet.i.t garcon?" she inquired, gazing eagerly at Flo"s long, slender frame. Her voice was old and thin, like the high quavering of an imperfect tuning-fork, and her eyes were sharp as talons in their grasping glance.
"Mademoiselle does not wish such a costume," gruffly responded Mephisto.
"Ma foi, there is no other," said the ancient, shrugging her shoulders.
"But one is left now; mademoiselle would make a fine troubadour."
"Flo," said Mephisto, "it"s a dare-devil scheme, try it; no one will ever know it but us, and we"ll die before we tell. Besides, we must; it"s late, and you couldn"t find your crowd."
And that was why you might have seen a Mephisto and a slender troubadour of lovely form, with mandolin flung across his shoulder, followed by a bevy of jockeys and ballet girls, laughing and singing as they swept down Rampart Street.
When the flash and glare and brilliancy of Ca.n.a.l Street have palled upon the tired eye, when it is yet too soon to go home to such a prosaic thing as dinner, and one still wishes for novelty, then it is wise to go into the lower districts. There is fantasy and fancy and grotesqueness run wild in the costuming and the behaviour of the maskers. Such dances and whoops and leaps as these hideous Indians and devils do indulge in; such wild curvetings and long walks! In the open squares, where whole groups do congregate, it is wonderfully amusing.