Plotting in Pirate Seas | Page 5

and but how?" queried Leon, suddenly greatly excited.
"Was he already going up to the Citadel?"
Stuart's face flushed with reflected excitement, but his eyes held the
negro's steadily. Leon knew more than the boy had expected he would
know.
"No," he replied, "I don't think so. I shall have to go."
"It is impossible, impossible, Yes!" cried Leon, throwing up his hands
in protest. "I told Monsieur your father that it was impossible for him.
And for you----"
A graphic shrug completed the sentence.
Stuart felt a sinking at the pit of his stomach, for he was no braver than
most boys. But the twist of his determination held him up.
"Leon," he said, trying to keep his voice steady, though he felt it
sounded a little choked, "isn't there the juice of some root which will
turn the skin brown, nearly black?"
"But, Yes, the plavac root."
The Haitian peered at the boy.
"You would make yourself a black man?" he continued.
Stuart ignored argument.
"Can you get some? Tonight? Right away?"
"Ah, well; you know--" Leon began.
The boy interrupted him sharply.
"If my father told you to get some, you would get it," he declared
peremptorily.

This was a shrewd guess, for, as a matter of fact, there were a number
of reasons why Leon should do what Mr. Garfield told him. The negro,
who had no means of finding how much or how little the boy knew,
shrugged his shoulders hugely, and, with a word of comment, left the
house, carrying a lantern. He was back in half an hour with a handful of
small plants, having long fibrous roots. These he cut off, placed in a pot,
covering them with water, and set the pot on the stove over a slow fire.
"It will not come off the skin as easily as it goes on, No!" he warned.
"Time enough to think about that when I want to take it off," came the
boy's reply.
The decoction ready, Leon rubbed it in thoroughly into Stuart's skin. It
prickled and smarted a good deal at first, but this feeling of discomfort
soon passed away.
"It won't rub off?" queried Stuart.
Leon permitted himself a grim pleasantry.
"Not against a grindstone!"
This positive assertion was as reassuring in one way as it was
disquieting in another. Stuart did not want to remain colored for an
indefinite period of time. In his heart of hearts he began to wonder if he
had not acted a little more hastily, and that if he had asked for Leon's
advice instead of ordering him around, he might have found some
milder stain. But it was too late to repent or retract now. His skin was a
rich coffee brown from head to foot, and his dark eyes and black hair
did not give his disguise the lie.
"I'm going to bed," he next announced, "and I want some ragged boy's
clothes by morning, Leon. Very ragged. Also an old pair of boots."
"That is not good," protested the Haitian, "every boy here goes barefoot,
Yes!"

Stuart was taken aback. This difficulty had not occurred to him. It was
true. Not only the boys, but practically nine men out of ten in Haiti go
barefoot. This Stuart could not do. Accustomed to wearing shoes, he
would cut his feet on the stones at every step he took on the roads, or
run thorns into them every step he took in the open country.
"I must have boots," he declared, "but old ones. Those I've been
wearing," he nodded to where they lay on the floor--for this
conversation was carried on with the boy wearing nothing but his new
brown skin--"would give me away at once."
"I will try and get them," answered Leon. His good-humored mouth
opened in a wide smile. "Name of a Serpent!" he ejaculated, "but you
are the image of the son of my half-sister!"
At which saying, perhaps Stuart ought to have been flattered, since it
evidenced the success of his disguise. But, being American, it ruffled
him to be told he resembled a negro.
He went to bed, far from pleased with himself and rather convinced that
he had been hasty. Yet his last waking thought, if it had been put into
words, would have been:
"It's the right thing to do, and I'm going through with it!"
CHAPTER II
WHERE BLACK MEN RULE
Stuart was not the only person on the streets of Cap Haitien the next
morning who was conscious of personal danger. Manuel Polliovo was
ill at ease. Bearing the secret that he bore, the Cuban knew that a hint of
it would bring him instant death, or, if the authorities had time to
intervene, incarceration in a Haitian prison, a fate sometimes worse
than