Several of the ringleaders had indeed begun to
exert themselves to prevent further disorder, or any loss of property,
the possibility of which had become apparent; but those who set in
motion the forces of evil cannot always control them afterwards. The
baser element of the white population, recruited from the wharves and
the saloons, was now predominant.
Captain McBane was the only one of the revolutionary committee who had
remained with the mob, not with any purpose to restore or preserve
order, but because he found the company and the occasion entirely
congenial. He had had no opportunity, at least no tenable excuse, to
kill or maim a negro since the termination of his contract with the
state for convicts, and this occasion had awakened a dormant appetite
for these diversions. We are all puppets in the hands of Fate, and
seldom see the strings that move us. McBane had lived a life of violence
and cruelty. As a man sows, so shall he reap. In works of fiction, such
men are sometimes converted. More often, in real life, they do not
change their natures until they are converted into dust. One does well
to distrust a tamed tiger.
On the outskirts of the crowd a few of the better class, or at least of
the better clad, were looking on. The double volley described had
already been fired, when the number of these was augmented by the
arrival of Major Carteret and Mr. Ellis, who had just come from the
Chronicle office, where the next day's paper had been in hasty
preparation.
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