Despite the chaos and noise outside, it was the unsettling silence that first caught their attention. The corridors were still brightly lit by electric lamps, but the silence made it feel as if they were in a tomb. The silence was frightening. Meanwhile, the chaotic clanking and thumping of weapons using gunpowder, and the clamor and mixing of voices outside continued to intensify, unabated.
They listened with rapt attention for a moment, when Jane suddenly realized the true meaning of the clamor, which was momentarily difficult to explain, and turned to her brother and asked,
"Can you walk?"
"I'll try my best to keep going!" Luis replied.
The girl assisted a man who had been tortured for four months as he trudged out of the dungeon and through the corridor to the antechamber. But for the moment, the antechamber was empty. They had probably all run off to put out the fire.
They trudged up to the third floor, where Jane unlocked the door with the key she had gotten from William Verne, and Louis followed her into the room.
Just a few moments earlier, Jane had left the drunken Mad King, whom she hadn't recognized at all as her half-brother!
The place was also empty, furnished like the basement, and nothing else had changed: Verne's armchair was still in front of the table, which was full of bottles and glasses; the other nine chairs were still placed in a semicircle opposite it.
Louis's legs couldn't support him. Jane motioned for her brother to take a seat in the chair, and they realized that the place was still dead silent and still, and what had happened to the hitokiri?
Jane's heart snapped and she left Louis and bravely walked outside the palace to look around.
She started looking at the ground floor and realized that there was no one on the entire ground floor. The door on the outside had been carefully closed, and all the inner doors were open to the outside, as if all the people inside were gone. Surprised, she checked the other floors and found no one there either. It was too much to believe - the whole palace was empty! Wasn't this too dangerous? Was this kingdom nearing its end.
Only the central tower and the platform leading up to it remained unchecked. Jane thought for a moment at the stairway leading to the platform, then continued up the stairs. As she had thought, the palace was not completely abandoned. When she was almost to the top she heard voices talking from outside. She carefully climbed the last few steps and hid in the shadows, looking out by the light of a searchlight coming from far away in the direction of the factory.
All the people of the palace were concentrated there: Jane recognized William Verne, and eight staff officers stood on either side, and a little further past them were some black guards and the nine black servants. They were seen crouching on the railing, pointing at something in the distance and yelling as they gestured. What on earth had happened to make them so angry?
Suddenly, Verne stood up straight and gave a command, then led all of them toward this stairway where Jane was hidden. She saw that each of them had two pistols, a short sword, and a musket gripped murderously in their belts.
It would only take a few seconds for them to discover her hiding place. At that point, the savages might not leave her alone.
She looked around blankly, subconsciously trying to find an escape route, which was impossible. Her eyes suddenly fell on a door at the top of the stairs - a door that led to the platform. Jane made a turn to get behind the door, and Jane's position changed instantly - changed by an instinctive, as-yet-unrealized movement.
Thunderous shouts and threatening curses came from outside at once. Jane had just slammed the door shut and was leaning her body against it when the men outside began slamming their rifle butts against the obstacle that had unexpectedly blocked their path.
Jane, stunned by all the shouting and clamor, turned around, both eyes fixed on the door, ready for it to be slammed open by the ferocious onslaught.
But the door was so solid that no matter how hard the people outside tried, it only made a sound, but it didn't shake, it didn't even shake a little. This gradually restored Jane's self-control. She realized: this door was also clad in metal plates like the doors outside factories and palaces, and could withstand any strong attack. Therefore, there was no need to worry about the little power controlled in Verne's hands smashing the door open.
The fact that Jane had led her brother and closed the doors of the palace one by one showed that Verne had taken precautions against a possible surprise attack: his palace was divided into many areas by such barriers, and in order to rush in you would have to smash those barriers open one by one. But now the fortifications were turned against him! That was when Jane felt much more at ease.
The windows of the palace were protected by strong bars and heavy metal panes, so Jane ran floor by floor to close them and insert the panes. In her haste, she seemed to do it all skillfully, and wondered where she got the strength to move those bulky metal panels with ease. It only took her an hour to close all the doors and windows on all the floors - now she was in the center of a masonry and metal building.
It was only then that she realized how tired she was: her legs were weak, her hands were bloody, and she was so exhausted that she could barely make it back to her brother.
"Why are you so tired?" Louis asked worriedly once he saw her in this state.
Waiting to catch her breath, Jane explained to him what she had done.
"Now we're the owners of the palace." She finally said in a triumphant tone.
"Is there no other exit but that staircase?" Her brother asked in disbelief of this feat.
"There's no other exit," Jane declared, "I'm sure William is now locked on the platform with no way out."
"But why would they all go up there?" Louis wondered, "What could have happened?"
That was what Jane didn't understand. She didn't see any preparations made to defend the factory. But it wasn't hard to see what was going on if you just looked outside. Together they climbed up another floor to a higher level and pulled back the window panel to look out through a crack.
Now they understood why William Verne and his cohorts were so alarmed: although the square below them was dark and silent, the right bank of the Red River was brightly lit and full of people. All the huts in the Negro quarter were on fire; the central part of the city, the slave quarter, had become an inferno on the ground.
The fire also spread to homes in the civilian neighborhoods, and the Happy Partiers' Quarter, located upriver and downriver, also began to burn. The fire was too big to put out and could only burn endlessly. In the areas that were not yet on fire there were terrible cries: wailing, cursing, and begging for mercy. The chaos of howling and the continuous sound of gunfire rang out.
"This must be led by Tongane," said Jane, "the slaves have revolted!"
"The slaves ...... Tongane? ......" Louis repeated mechanically, not understanding the meaning of these words at all.
Jane truthfully explained to her brother the institutions of the city of Blackwick, and told him briefly how she came to be here and the events that had made her a prisoner. She also told him why she had made the trip; how she had found evidence to prove the innocence of her brother, George Bratson; how she had made contact with the expedition led by Councilor Balzac and how she had been kidnapped, and so on.
She told her brother, pointing to the factory on the far side of the square, illuminated by searchlights, that her companions, with the exception of the Negro Tungane, had taken refuge there. As for Tongane, it was he who had taken on the task of awakening his fellow blacks in the Black Country, and the sight before him proved that he had done it well.
Because she had no patience to wait, she escaped that night alone, thinking she could save all those who were trapped. That's how she found her unfortunate brother. In the meantime, Tongane had accomplished so much, and the weapons had been delivered as promised, that the revolt was launched. There was no doubt about it: just now William Verne and his men were planning to take command in person, and unluckily she had pre-empted them and cut them off.
"So what do we do now?" Luis asked.
"Wait," Jane replied, "It must not be safe to just go out. Besides, in this mess, they'll recognize no one. Besides, we can't do them any favors - we don't have any weapons in our hands."
Louise sensibly told Jane that it would be better to have weapons, so Jane went around the palace again. The haul was not great, finding only a musket and two pistols, plus a handful of cartridges. With these weapons, Jane was satisfied.
When Jane returned with the weapons, the situation outside had changed completely: the blacks had rushed into the square and gathered thousands of people. In a flash, they attacked the black guards' barracks again like a storm, killing the black guards on the spot, and flames raged from the hangar where the 40 helicopters were parked. The Negroes had gotten a taste of robbery and bloodshed, and were in a frenzy of vengeance for their long suffering. Their every move showed that their hatred would not be quelled until the entire city was destroyed and all the deviants were decimated.
Seeing all this, William Verne was momentarily in a hurry, unable to quell the riot, even if he had the power of return. For though they could not hear exactly what the negroes below were saying downstairs, they could hear them screaming and howling again. There were frequent thumps and bangs from the platform as bullets were fired into the hordes of blacks, victimizing countless others.
But they were undeterred. The flames from the black guards' quarters and the helicopter hangar had the appearance of huge torches lighting up the square. They crossed the square and began to attack the palace. While they were trying to attack, there was suddenly intense gunfire from the banks of the Red River. It turned out that the happy partisans had finally lined up and started to organize a counterattack, and in no time, hundreds of bodies lay on the ground. The square suddenly became a battlefield of brutal fighting and massacre. The scene was indeed indescribable. The Negroes, who had no gunpowder firing weapons, could only wield their axes, knives, spears and even their teeth to fight with the happy partisans; while the latter were able to shoot at them at close range with their guns and bullets.
Barehanded Negroes could not stand a long time against the merry men with their weapons. The Negroes' camp soon hesitated and began to fall back, even routing toward the banks of the Red River, leaving the square to the Happy Partiers.
They were in hot pursuit, trying to salvage the center part of the Happy Partiers' district, which had not yet caught fire.
Just at the moment they crossed the bridge, a violent explosion came. The group of them all fell into the water at once. Jane and Louis saw from their vantage point in the palace they were in that the explosion occurred in the farthest corner of the civilian area.
Whatever the cause of the explosion, in any case, it opened a lifeline for the fleeing blacks to escape into the open. The slaves escaped through this gap and hid in the farmland and surrounding brush. After a quarter of an hour the pursuers withdrew to the banks of the Red River and came back to the square. Not only because there was no enemy left to pursue, but because they themselves were frightened by the sound of another violent explosion that followed.
These planned explosions were deliberate. The first occurred in the civilian area farthest from the palace.
Five minutes later, there were two more explosions to the left and right of where the first one occurred. Another five minutes later, there were two more explosions close to the Red River, but still in the civilian area. That's when the Happy Partiers targeted civilian neighborhoods.
Since then, explosions have occurred every half hour or so, the cause of which has never been clear. Every 30 minutes there is a clamor, and some part of the civilian area is leveled with it.
The whites of Blackfield and all those who lived cowered in the square, helplessly at the mercy of fate, as if a truly terrible supernatural force was systematically destroying the city.
The overseers and mid-level commanders, who had once reigned supreme, were furious at this time, banging futilely on the doors of the palace and cursing William Verne, who stood on the platform, with all the malice they could muster, wondering why he had abandoned them. And William Verne was shouting and making all sorts of gestures at them. But it was all in vain, for none of them knew the difficulty of each; and his yelling was drowned out by the deafening din.
So that night passed, and the daytime scene was even more gruesome: the bodies of blacks and whites, in their hundreds, littered the square. If the whites had won in the end, they had paid a pretty heavy price - the 800 or so whites who had been living in the civilian and happy partisan neighborhoods the first day now had fewer than 400 casualties; the rest had perished - the riot had cost the whites more than half. From their high perch in the palace, Jane and Louis could clearly see that most of the slaves were hiding in the wild cultivated fields, heading straight for the Niger River, but how many of them could have made the journey without food, water or weapons?
But most of them were still a little bit stuck in their homeland and wanted to rebuild it when the fighting was over. They were seen scattered in groups across the fields, foolishly gazing out in the direction of Blackwick City. Smoke was billowing there, and a series of explosions were gradually reducing it to rubble. Just then, there was another explosion. This time it was in the direction of the palace platform, and one after another. Accompanying the last explosion was the sound of the wall collapsing.
Jane and Louise had been at the window, and all the changes outside escaped both of their eyes, when Louise squeezed her sister's hand and cast her a questioning glance.
"It's William," she explained, for she knew the architecture of the palace too well not to understand the meaning of the explosion, "and now he's trying to blow the doors of the platform open with cannon fire."
Jane spoke calmly. She had been watching the progress of events, and she thought that this time it had come down to a matter of life and death.
"Then," Louis said as he grabbed the pistol his sister had found, "we just can't die before we fall into their hands again."
Jane gestured for him to stay put for now.
"It's still early for them to come in." She said calmly, "Total **** there are five doors this strong and mounted at an angle that makes it impossible for the cannons to aim at them."
She was correct in her prediction, and then the explosions stopped. Heavy rolling and exasperated shouting from the platform told them that William Verne and his cohorts were trying their best to get the cannon onto the platform to bombard the second door, and with considerable difficulty.
It wasn't long, though, before that work was interrupted as well. For the explosions, which had previously stopped, began again, and drew the attention of Louis and Jane Bratson in equal measure.
The timed explosions of that kind were now peaking, causing far more damage than those earlier explosions. That destructive force was now destroying the left bank of the Red River, and the plant's vegetable garden itself was turned to dirt and sent flying into the air with an explosion. When the smoke cleared, only a line of the vegetable garden was seen to have been blown up, and a small part of the factory had collapsed. In the thick smoke, a large group of workers immediately rushed out. Jane recognized them immediately: it was a queue of her fellow prisoners and workers from Camaret, with women and children in the middle. Why were these poor people leaving the factory to walk out into the open square? Surely they would have run into the merry band of partisans who were still bombarding the palace gates in vain.
The merry men did not see these new opponents, for they were blocked by the wall of the square; but Wilhelm Verne, who stood on the platform, could see them over the wall, and pointed them out to his party. But by this time the merry partisans hated the king, who was alone in his protection. No one paid any attention to the meaning of his gesture, and the men running from the factory went through the door that connected the docks to the square.
The Happy Partiers let out a frantic howl at the sight of them, and immediately abandoned their futile assault on the door, instead grabbing their weapons and lunging at their new opponents.
But they were mostly the more agile and strong-minded ones. Those who had emerged from the factories armed themselves with whatever they could grab - some held a blacksmith's hammer, some a pair of pincers, and others an iron bar - and also lunged at the merry partisans. The battle was fierce, and the clashing blows of metal were deafening. The plaza, strewn with bodies the night before, was once again bloodied.
Jane's heart agonized as she watched the gruesome scenes. How many of her friends were there! She feared for Balzac, for Amedele Florence, for the kind-hearted Dr. Chatonnet, and especially for the safety of her dear St. Bere.
The hooting suddenly became more ferocious.
Weapons helped the workers, and the factory side was divided into two parts - one retreated towards the docks; the other was forced towards the palace. For this part there was no hope of escape: they were forced to the base of the wall, and on the one hand they had to deal with the merry partisans in front of them; on the other hand, Wilhelm Verne and his accomplices could open fire on these poor men from above, and even the way of retreat was cut off .......
While they were in a dilemma and desperate, the door of the palace opened. Inside the door stood Jane Bratson! She and Louis then fled into the palace for shelter, using pistols and muskets to cover the people being chased by the enemy. The merry partisans froze, wondering what this was all about. By the time they came back to their senses and continued their pursuit, it was too late. The palace doors closed again and they could only sigh there.