“She might easily have passed for pure French. I fancy that I was the only person aboard who could see the outcrop of African—or, to be polite, Haytian. She was charming in manner and appearance, inclined to be fair, with blue eyes and that dusky blonde hair which will defy any pedigree. Her face was pretty, rather piquant, and her figure _svelte_ and full of grace. Altogether she was most attractive and not lacking in a certain _chic_, but there was a furtive expression about her eyes like that which I have noticed in the eyes of a trained lioness.
“I talked with the Fouchères many times during the voyage, and learned that since their marriage they had lived in Paris and were returning to Hayti for the first time. Madame, it appeared, although Haytian by birth, had been sent to a convent school in France when a mere child and had not visited her native country since then.
“The day after our arrival in New York we sailed for Hayti by the Dutch mail. By this time I had grown to know them quite well. A very decent fellow, Fouchère; different from the average educated Haytian—but, then, he was of quite a higher type. On parting at Port-au-Prince he made me promise to visit them before I left the island.”
Leyden paused and shifted his position, leaning back against an awning stanchion and hooking the fingers of one hand over the bolt-rope above his head. The night had darkened, for a heavy cloud-bank had drifted across to shroud that part of the sky where the late moon would rise. It welded to itself the dim, broken outline of the mountain-tops and gave to the sable contour of the land the sinister aspect of looming almost to the zenith—and all the while from somewhere just beneath the surface came the hollow, rhythmic beat of the bamboula.
“Enough to drive one _loi_,” muttered Leyden.
I heard a rustling from the shore-boat lying at the staging. The crew were softly picking up their oars.
“They are getting restless, those fellows below. They cannot stand it long, this night and that noise. Ho! they are shoving off without their fares.” He leaned over the rail and hailed the boatman in Créole.
“_Ou ça v’aller?_” he called, with a trace of irony. They paid no attention.
“_Attention, mon cher! Ou ça v’aller?_” he called, peremptorily.