"I don't know, Jimmy. He made Levin sail her up to the landin' down yer below town, whair Levin's father, Cap'n Dennis, launched theIdyfifteen year ago. I left Levin thar, and he said, 'Jack, I'm goin' off with the nigger trader to git some of his money fur mother!'"
"Poor miserable boy!" Phœbus exclaimed; "he's led off easy as his pore daddy. The man he's gone with, Miss Vesty, is black as hell. Joe Johnson is known to every thief on the bay, every gypsy on the shore. He steals free niggers when he can't buy slave ones, outen Delaware state. He sometimes runs away Maryland slaves to oblige their hypocritical masters that can't sell 'em publicly, an' Johnson and the bereaved owner divides the price. Go in the house, yaller gal!" Jimmy Phœbus turned to Roxy, who obeyed instantly. "Jack Wonnell, you go too; I'm done with you!" (Jack slipped around the house and made his peace with Roxy before he started.) "You needn't to go, Samson; I know you're true as steel!"
"I must go an' git de breakfast, Jimmy," the negro said, going in.
"Now, Miss Vesty"—Phœbus turned to the mistress of Teackle Hall—"Joe Johnson has got old Hominy and the little niggers, by smoke! That part of this hokeypokey is purty sure! Did he steal them an' decoy them, or wair they sold to him by Judge Custis or by Meshach Milburn?"
"By neither, I will risk my life. Mr. Milburn was taken to his bed Saturday evening, and on Sunday father went to Delaware on legal business for my husband."
"That is Meshach Milburn, I hear," the bay sailor remarked, with a penetrating look. "Shall I go and see him on this nigger business?"
"No," Vesta replied; "he is too sick, and it is a delicate subject to name to him. My girls, Virgie and Roxy, think old Hominy ran away from a superstitious fear she had of Mr. Milburn, who had become the master of Teackle Hall by marriage."
"Yes, by smoke! every nigger in town, big and little, is afraid of Milburn's hat."
"He has no ownership in those servants, nor has my father now. I will tell you, James—relying on your prudence—that Hominy belonged to me, and so did those three children, having passed from my father to my husband and thence to me and back to my father, and from him to me again in the very hour of my marriage. I fear they have been persuaded away, to be abused and sold out of Maryland."
Jimmy Phœbus looked up at the sighing trees and over the wide façade of Teackle Hall, and exclaimed "by smoke!" several times before he made his conclusions.
"Miss Vesty," he said, finally, "send for your father to come home immediately. People will not understand how Joe Johnson, outlaw as he is, dared to rob a Maryland judge of his house servants, Johnson himself bein' a Marylander, unless they had some understanding. Your sudden marriage, an' your pappy's embarrassments, will be put together, by smoke! an' thar is some blunt enoughto say that when Jedge Custis is hard up, he'll git money anyhow!"
The charge, made with an honest man's want of skill, battered down all explanations.
"I confess it," said Vesta. "Papa's going away on a Sunday, and these people disappearing on Sunday night, might excite idle comment. It might be said that he endeavored to sell some of his property before his creditor could seize it."
"I have seen you about yer since you was a baby, Vesty, an' Ellenora says you're better game an' heart than these 'ristocrats, fur who I never keered! That's why I take the liberty of calling you Vesty. Now, let me tell you about your niggers. If they was a-gwyn to freedom in a white man's keer, I wouldn't stop 'em to be cap'n of a man-of-war. But Joe Johnson, supposin' that he's got of 'em, is a demon. Do you see the stab on that dog? well, it's done with one of the bagnet pistols them kidnappers carries—hoss pistols, with a spring dagger on the muzzle; and, when they come to close quarters, they stab with 'em. Johnson killed your dog; I know his marks. He sails this whole bay, and maybe he's run them niggers to Washin'ton, or to Norfolk, an' sold 'em south. It ain' no use to foller him to either of them places, if he has, with the wind an' start he's got, and your pappy's influence lost to us by his absence. But thar is one chance to overhaul the thief."
"What is that, James?" said Vesta, earnestly. "I do want to save those poor people from the abuse of a man who could kill my poor, fond dog."
"Joe Johnson keeps a hell-trap—a reg'lar Pangymonum, up near the head of Nanticoke River. It's the headquarters of his band, and a black band they air. He has had good wind"—the pungy captain looked up and noted the breeze—"to get him out of Manokin last night, and into the Sound; but he must beat up the Nanticoke all day, and we kin head him off by land, if that's his destination, before he gits to Vienna, an' make him show his cargo. Then, with a messenger to follow Jedge Custis an' turn him back, we can swear these niggers on Johnson—and, you see, we can't make no such oath till we git the evidence—an' then, by smoke! we'll bring ole Hominy an' the pore chillen back to Teackle Hall."
"Here is one you love to serve, James," said Vesta, as the Widow Dennis came in the gate.
"I came to meet you at the landing, James," said the blue-eyed, sweet-voiced widow, with the timid step and ready blush. "Levin is gone for a week with a negro trader; he sends me so much money, I fear he is under an unusual temptation, and Wonnell says the trader is giving him liquor. What shall I do?"
"Make me his father, Ellenory, and that'll give me an interest over him, and you will command me. You want a first mate in your crew. Levin kin make a fool of me if I go chase him now, and I can't measure money with a nigger trader, by smoke!"
"Oh! James," the widow spoke, "you know my heart would be yours if I could control it. When my way is clear you will have but to ask. Do go and find Levin!"
"Norah, we suspect the same trader of having taken off Hominy, our cook, and the kitchen children, in Levin's boat."
The widow listened to Vesta, and burst into tears. "He will be accessory to the crime," she sobbed. "Oh, this is what I have ever feared. James Phœbus, you have always had the best influence over Levin. If you love me, arrest him before the law takes cognizance of this wild deed. Where has he gone?"
Virgie appeared upon the lawn to say that Mrs. Custis wanted to know who should drive her as far as Salisbury, where she could get a slave of her son-in-law to continue on with her to Cambridge.
"I have been thinking all the morning where I can find a reliable man to go and bring back papa," Vesta answered; "there are a few slaves at the Furnace, but time is precious."
"Here is Samson," Virgie said, "and he has got a mule he rides all over the county. Let him go."
"Go whar, my love?" asked Samson.
"To Dover, in Delaware," Vesta answered. "You can ride to Laurel by dark, Samson, and get to Dover to-morrow afternoon."
"And I can ride with him as far as Salisbury," Jimmy Phœbus said, "and get out to the Nanticoke some way; fur I see Ellenora will cry till I go."
"You can do better than that, James," Vesta said, rapidly thinking. "Samson can take you to Spring Hill Church or Barren Creek Springs, by a little deviation, and at the Springs you will be only three miles from the Nanticoke. Even mamma might go on with the carriage to-night as far as the Springs, or to Vienna."
"If two of them are going," Virgie exclaimed, "one can drive Missy Custis and the other ride the mule."
Samson shook his head.
"Dey say a free nigger man gits cotched up in dat ar Delawaw state. Merrylin's good enough fur me. I likes de Merrylin light gals de best," looking at Virgie.
"Go now, Samson, to oblige Miss Vesty," Virgie said, "and I'll try to love you a little, black and bad as you are."
"I'se afraid of Delawaw state," Samson repeated, laughing slowly. "Joe Johnson, dat I put dat head on, will git me whar he lives if I go dar, mebbe."
"No," Phœbus put in, "I'll be a lookin' after him on the banks of the Nanticoke, Samson, while you keep right in the high-road from Laurel to Georgetown, and on to Dover. Joe Johnson's been whipped at the post, and banished from Delaware for life, and dussn't go thar no more."
"If you go, Samson," little Roxy put in, having reappeared, "Virgie'll feel complimented. Anything that obliges Miss Vesty counts with Virgie."
"If you are a free man," Virgie herself exclaimed, her slight, nervous, willowy figure expanding, "are you afraid to go into a freer state than Maryland? If I was free I would want to go to the freest state of all. Behave like a free man, Samson Hat, or what is freedom worth to you?"
"It's wuth so much, pretty gal, dat I don't want to be a-losin' of it, mind, I tell you, 'sept to my wife when she'll hab me."
Samson watched the quadroon's delicate, high-bred features, her skin almost paler than her young mistress's, her figure like the clove's after a hard winter—the more active that a little meagre—her head small, and its tresses soft as the crow blackbird's plumage, and the loyalty that lay in her large eyes, like strong passion, for her mistress, was turned to pride, and nearly scorn, when they listened to him.
"A slave, Miss Vesty says"—Virgie spoke with almost fierceness—"is not one that's owned, half as much as one that sells himself—to hard drink, or to selfishness, or to fear. You're not a free man, Samson, if you're afraid, and are like these low slave negroes who dare nothing if they can only get a little low pleasure. All that can make a black man white, in my eyes, is a white man's enterprise."
Vesta felt, as she often had done, the capable soul of her servant, and did not resent her spirit as unbecoming a slave, but rather felt responsive chords in her own nature, as if, indeed, Virgie was the more imperious of the two. Coming now into full womanhood, her race elements finding their composition, her character unrestrained by any one in Teackle Hall, Virgie was her young mistress's shield-bearer, like David to the princely Jonathan.
"Why, Virgie," Samson answered, with humility, "I never meant not to go, lady gal, after marster's wife asked me, I only wanted you to beg me hard, an' mebbe I'd git a kiss befo' I started."
"Wait till you come back, and see if you do your errand well," Virgie spoke again. "I shall not kiss you now."
"I will," cried little Roxy, to the amusement of them all, giving Samson a hearty smack from her little pouting mouth; "and now you've got it, think it's Virgie's kiss, and get your breakfast and start!"
As they went to their abodes to make ready, Jimmy Phœbus found Jack Wonnell playing marbles with the boys at the court-house corner.
"Jack," he said, "I'm a-going to find Levin an' that nigger trader. I may git in a peck of trouble up yonder on the Nanticoke. Tell all the pungy men whair I'm a-goin', an' what fur."
"Can't I do somethin' fur you, Jimmy? Can't I give you one o' my bell-crowns; thair's a-plenty of 'em left."
"Take my advice, Jack, an' tie a stone to all them hats and sink' em in the Manokin. Ole Meshach's hat has made more hokey-pokey than the Bank of Somerset. Pore an' foolish as you air, maybe your ole bell-crowns will ruin you."
The road to Salisbury—laid out in 1667, when "Cecil, Lord of Maryland and Avalon," erected a county "in honor of our dear sister, the Lady Mary Somerset"—followed the beaver-dams across the little river-heads, and pierced the flat pine-woods and open farms, and passed through two little hamlets, before our travellers saw the broad mill-ponds and poplar and mulberry lined streets of the most active town—albeit without a court-house—in the lower peninsula. Jimmy Phœbus, driving the two horses and the family carriage, and Samson, following on his mule, descended into the hollow of Salisbury at thedinner-hour, and stopped at the hotel. The snore of grist-mills, the rasp of mill-saws, the flow of pine-colored breast-water into the gorge of the village, the forest cypress-trees impudently intruding into the obliquely-radiating streets, and humidity of ivy and creeper over many of the old, gable-chimneyed houses, the long lumber-yards reflected in the swampy harbor among the canoes, pungies, and sharpies moored there, the small houses sidewise to the sandy streets, the larger ones rising up the sandy hills, the old box-bush in the silvery gardens, the bridges close together, and the smell of tar and sawdust pleasantly inhaled upon the lungs, made a combination like a caravan around some pool in the Desert of the Nile.
"If there is any chance to catch my negroes," Mrs. Custis said, "I will go right on after dinner. Samson, send Dave, my daughter's boy, to me immediately; he is working in this hotel."
Samson found Dave to be none other than the black class-leader he had failed to overcome at the beginning of our narrative, but changes were visible in that individual Samson had not expected. From having a clean, godly, modest countenance, becoming his professions, Dave now wore a sour, evil look; his eyes were blood-shotten, and his straight, manly shoulders and chest, which had once exacted Samson's admiration and envy, were stooped to conform with a cough he ever and anon made from deep in his frame.
"Dave," said Samson, "your missis's modder wants you, boy, to drive her to Vienny. What ails you, Dave, sence I larned you to box?"
"Is you de man?" Dave exclaimed, hoarsely; "den may de Lord forgive you, furInever kin. Dat lickin' I mos' give you, made me a po', wicked, backslidin' fool."
"Why, Dave, I jess saw you was agoodman; I didn't mean you no harm, boy."
"You ruined me, free nigger," repeated the huge slave, with a scowl, partly of revenge and partly remorse. "You set up my conceit dat I could box. I had never struck a chile till dat day; after dat I went aroun' pickin' quarrels wid bigger niggers, an' low white men backed me to fight. I was turned out o' my church; I turned my back on de Lord; whiskey tuk hold o' me, Samson. De debbil has entered into Class-leader Dave."
"Oh, brudder, wake up an' do better. Yer, I give you a dollar, an' want to be your friend, Davy, boy."
"I'll git drink wid it," Dave muttered, going; and, as he passed out of the stable-door he looked back at Samson fiercely, and exclaimed, "May Satan burn your body as he will burn my soul. I hate you, man, long as you live!"
Jimmy Phœbus remarked, a few moments afterwards, that Dave, dividing a pint of spirits with a lean little mulatto boy, put a piece of money in the boy's hands, who then rode rapidly out of the tavern-yard upon a fleet Chincoteague pony.
At two o'clock they again set forward, the man Dave driving the carriage and Jimmy Phœbus sitting beside him, while Samson easily kept alongside upon his old roan mule, the road becoming more sandy as they ascended the plateau between the Wicomico and Nanticoke, and the carriage drawing hard.
"If it is too late to keep on beyond Vienna to-night," said Mrs. Custis, "I will stop there with my friends, the Turpins, and start again, after coffee, in the morning, and reach Cambridge for breakfast."
"I will turn off at Spring Hill," Samson spoke, "and I kin feed my mule at sundown in Laurel an' go to sleep."
In an hour they came in sight of old Spring Hill church, a venerable relic of the colonial Established Church, at the sources of a creek called Rewastico; andbefore they crossed the creek the driver, Dave, called "Ho, ho!" in such an unnecessarily loud voice that Mrs. Custis reproved him sharply. Dave jumped down from the seat and appeared to be examining some part of the breeching, though Samson assured him that it was all right. As Dave finished his examination, he raised both hands above his head twice, and stretched to the height of his figure as he stood on the brow of a little hill.
"Missy Custis," he apologized, as he turned back, "I is tired mighty bad dis a'ternoon. Dat stable keeps me up half de night."
"Liquor tires you more, David," Mrs. Custis spoke, sharply; "and that tavern is no place to hire you to with your appetite for drink, as I shall tell your master."
At this moment Jimmy Phœbus observed the lean little mulatto boy who had left the hotel come up out of the swampy place in the road and exchange a look of intelligence with Dave as he rode past on the pony.
"Boy," cried Samson, "is dat de road to Laurel?"
The boy made no answer, but, looking back once, timidly, ground his heels into the pony's flank and darted into the brush towards Salisbury.
"Samson," spoke Dave, "you see dat ole woman in de cart yonder?"—he pointed to a figure ascending the rise in the ground beyond the brook—"I know her, an' she's gwyn right to Laurel. She lives dar. It's ten miles from dis yer turn-off, an' she knows all dese yer woods-roads."
"Good-bye, den, an' may you find Aunt Hominy an' de little chillen, Jimmy, an' bring dem all home to Prencess Anne from dat ar Joe Johnson!" cried Samson, and trotted his mule through the swamp and away. Jimmy Phœbus saw him overtake the old woman in the cart and begin to speak with her as the scrubby woods swallowed them in.
"What's dat he said about Joe Johnson?" observedDave, after a bad spell of coughing, as they cleared the old church and entered the sandy pine-woods.
Mrs. Custis spoke up more promptly than Jimmy Phœbus desired, and told the negro about the escape of Hominy and the children, and the hope of Mr. Phœbus to head the party off as they ascended the Nanticoke towards the Delaware state-line.
"You don't want to git among Joe Johnson's men, boss?" said the red-eyed negro; "dey bosses all dis country heah, on boff sides o' de state-line. All dat ain't in wid dem is afraid o' dem."
"How fur is it from this road to Delaware, Dave?" asked Phœbus.
"We're right off de corner-stone o' Delawaw state dis very minute. It's hardly a mile from whar we air. De corner's squar as de stone dat sots on it, an' is cut wid a pictur o' de king's crown."
"Mason and Dixon's line they call it," interpreted Mrs. Custis.
"Do you know Joe Johnson, Dave?"
"Yes, Marster Phœbus, you bet I does. He's at Salisbury, he's at Vienna, he's up yer to Crotcher's Ferry, he's all ober de country, but he don't go to Delawaw any more in de daylight. He was whipped dar, an' banished from de state on pain o' de gallows. But he lives jess on dis side o' de Delawaw line, so dey can't git him in Delawaw. He calls his place Johnson's Cross-roads: ole Patty Cannon lives dar, too. She's afraid to stay in Delawaw now."
"Why, what is the occupation of those terrible people at present?" asked Mrs. Custis.
No answer was made for a minute, and then Dave said, in a low, frightened voice, as he stole a glance at both of his companions out of his fiery, scarred eyes:
"Kidnappin', I 'spect."
"It's everything that makes Pangymonum," JimmyPhœbus explained; "that old woman, Patty Cannon, has spent the whole of a wicked life, by smoke!—or ever sence she came to Delaware from Cannady, as the bride of pore Alonzo Cannon—a-makin' robbers an' bloodhounds out of the young men she could git hold of. Some of' em she sets to robbin' the mails, some to makin' an' passin' of counterfeit money, but most of 'em she sets at stealin' free niggers outen the State of Delaware; and, when it's safe, they steal slaves too. She fust made a tool of Ebenezer Johnson, the pirate of Broad Creek, an' he died in his tracks a-fightin fur her. Then she took hold of his sons, Joe Johnson an' young Ebenezer, an' made 'em both outlaws an' kidnappers, an' Joe she married to her daughter, when Bruington, her first son-in-law, had been hanged. When Samson Hat, who is the whitest nigger I ever found, knocked Joe Johnson down in Princess Anne, the night before last, he struck the worst man in our peninsula."
Dave listened to this recital with such a deep interest that his breath, strong with apple whiskey, came short and hot, and his hands trembled as he guided the horses. At the last words, he exclaimed:
"Samson knocked Joe Johnson down? Den de debbil has got him, and means to pay him back!"
"What's that?" cried Jimmy Phœbus.
The sweat stood on the big slave's forehead, as if his imagination was terribly possessed, but before he could explain Mrs. Custis interrupted:
"I think it was said that old Patty Cannon corrupted Jake Purnell, who cut his throat at Snow Hill five years ago. He was a free negro who engaged slaves to steal other slaves and bring them to him, and he delivered them up to the white kidnappers for money; and nobody could account for his prosperity till a negro who had been beaten to death was found in the Pocomoke River, and three slaves who had been seen in his company were arrested for the murder. They confessed that they had stolen the dead negro and he had escaped from them, and was so beaten with clubs, to make him tractable, that when they gave him to Purnell his life was all gone. Then he was thrown in the river, but his body came up after sinking, and the confession of the wretched tools explained to the slave-owners where all their missing negroes had gone. They marched and surrounded Purnell's hut, and he was discovered burrowed beneath it. They brought the dogs, and fire to drive him out, and as he came out he cut his throat with desperate slashes from ear to ear."
During this narrative the man Dave had listened with rising nervous excitement, rolling his eyes as if in strong inward torment, till the concluding words inspired such terror in him that he dropped the reins, threw back his head, and shouted, with large beads of sweat all round his brow:
"Mercy! mercy! Have mercy! Save me, oh, my Lord!"
"He's got a fit, I reckon," cried Jimmy Phœbus, promptly grasping the reins as the horses started at the cry, and with his leg pinning Dave to the carriage-seat. At that moment the road descended into the hollow of Barren Creek, and, leaping down at the old Mineral Springs Hotel, a health resort of those days, Phœbus humanely procured water and freshened up the gasping negro's face.
"I declare, I am almost afraid to trust myself to this man," Mrs. Custis observed, with more distaste than trepidation.
"Every nigger in this region," exclaimed Jimmy Phœbus, "thinks Pangymonum's comin' down at the dreaded name of Patty Cannon; an' this nigger's gone most to ruin, any way."
"Oh, marster," exclaimed the slave, recovering hisspeech and glaring wildly around, "I hain't been always the pore sinner rum an' fightin' has made of me. I served the Lord all my youth; I praised his name an' kept the road to heaven; an' thinkin' of the shipwreck I'se made of a good conscience, an' hearin' missis tell of the end of Jake Purnell, it made me yell to de good Lord for mercy, mercy, oh, my soul!"
His frightful agitation increased, and Jimmy Phœbus soothed him, good-naturedly saying:
"Mrs. Custis, I reckon you'd better let him come in the tavern and take a little sperits; it'll strengthen his nerves an' make him drive better."
As they drank at the old summer-resort bar, at that time in the height of its celebrity, and the onlyspaon the peninsula, south of the Brandywine Springs, Phœbus spoke low to the negro:
"Dave, somethin' not squar and fair is a-workin' yer, by smoke! I've got my eye on you, nigger, an' sure as hokey-pokey thair it'll stay. You know my arrand yer, Dave: to save a pore, ignorant, deluded black woman from Joe Johnson's band. Now, you've been a-cryin 'Mercy!' I want you to show mercy by a-tellin' of me whar I'm to overtake an' sarch Levin Dennis's cat-boat if it comes up the Nanticoke to-night with them people and Joe Johnson aboard!"
Having swallowed his liquor greedily, the colored man replied, with his former lowering countenance and evasive eyes:
"You can't do nothin' as low down de river as Vienny, 'case de Nanticoke is too wide dar, and if you cross it at Vienny ferry, den you got de Norfwest Fork between you and Johnson's Cross-roads, wid one ferry over dat, at Crotcher's, an' Joe Johnson owns all dat place. But you kin keep up dis side o' de Nanticoke, Marster Phœbus, de same distance as from yer to Vienny, to de pint whar de Norfwest Fork come in. Sometimes Joe Johnsonsails up dat big fork to get to his cross-roads. In gineral he keeps straight up de oder fork to Betty Twiford's wharf, right on de boundary line."
"How far is that?"
"It's five miles from yer to Vienny, and five miles from yer to a landin' opposite de Norfwest Fork. Four miles furder on you're at Sharptown, an' dar you can see Betty Twiford's house on de bank two miles acrost de Nanticoke."
"Nine miles, then, to Sharptown! He's had the tide agin him since he entered the Nanticoke, and it's not turned yit. By smoke! I'll look for a conveyance!"
"You can ride with me to the first landing," spoke up a noble-looking man, whip in hand; "and after delaying a little there, I shall go on the Sharptown ferry and cross the river."
Phœbus accepted the invitation immediately, and cautioning Mrs. Custis to speak with less freedom in that part of the country, he bade her adieu, and took the vacant seat in the stranger's buggy.
When Mrs. Custis came to Vienna ferry, and the horses and carriage went on board the scow to be rowed to the little, old, shipping settlement of that name, the negro Dave, standing at the horses' heads, exchanged a few sentences with the ferry-keeper.
"Dave," called Mrs. Custis, a little later on, "you have no love, I see, for old Samson."
"He made a boxer outen me an' a bad man, missis."
"Do you know the man he works for—Meshach Milburn?"
"No, missis. I never see him."
"He wears a peculiar hat—nothing like gentlemen's hats nowadays: it is a hat out of a thousand."
"I never did see it, missis."
"You cannot mistake it for any other hat in the world. Now, Samson is the only servant and watchman at Mr.Milburn's store, and he attends to that disgraceful hat. If you can ever get it from him, Dave, and destroy it, you will be doing a useful act, and I will reward you well."
The moody negro looked up from his remorseful, brutalized orbs, and said:
"Steal it?"
"Oh, no, I do not advise a theft, David—though such a wretched hat can have no legal value. It is an affliction to my daughter and Judge Custis and all of us, and you might find some way to destroy it—that is all."
"I'll git it some day," the negro muttered; and drove into the old tobacco-port of Vienna.
A map would be out of place in a story, yet there are probably some who perceive that this is a story with a reality; and if such will take any atlas and open it at the "Middle States" of the American republic, they will see that the little State of Delaware is fitted as nicely into a square niche of Maryland as if it were a lamp, or piece of statuary, standing on a mantelpiece. It stands there on a mantelshelf about forty miles wide, and rises to more than three times that height, making a perfectly straight north and south line at right angles with its base. Thus mortised into Maryland, its ragged eastern line is formed of the Atlantic Ocean and the broad Delaware Bay.
The only considerable river within this narrow strip orHermesof a state is the Nanticoke, which, like a crack in the wall,—and the same blow fractured the image on the mantel,—flows with breadth and tidal ebb and flow from the Chesapeake Bay through the Eastern Shore ofMaryland into Delaware, and is there formed of two tidal sources, the one to the north continuing to be called the Nanticoke, and that to the south—nearly as imposing a stream—named Broad Creek.
Nature, therefore, as if anticipating some foolish political boundaries on the part of man, prepared one drain and channel of ingress at the southwestern corner of Delaware to the splendid bay of Virginia.
Around that corner of the little Delaware commonwealth, in a flat, poor, sandy, pine-grown soil, Jimmy Phœbus rode by the stranger in the afternoon of October, with the sun, an hour high in the west, shining upon his dark, Greekish cheeks and neck, and he hearing the fall birds whistle and cackle in the mellowing stubble and golden thickets.
The meadow-lark, the boy's delight, was picking seed, gravel, and insects' eggs in the fields—large and partridge-like, with breast washed yellow from the bill to the very knees, except at the throat, where hangs a brilliant reticule of blackish brown; his head and back are of hawkish colors—umber, brown, and gray—and in his carriage is something of the gamecock. He flies high, sometimes alone, sometimes in the flock, and is our winter visitor, loving the old fields improvidence has abandoned, and uttering, as he feeds, the loud sounds of challenge, as if to cry, "Abandoned by man; pre-empted by me!"
Jimmy Phœbus also heard the bold, bantering woodpecker, with his red head, whose schoolmaster is the squirrel, and whose tactics of keeping a tree between him and his enemy the Indian fighters adopted. He mimics the tree-frog's cry, and migrates after October, like other voluptuaries, who must have the round year warm, and fruit and eggs always in market. Dressed in his speckled black swallow-tail coat, with his long pen in his mouth and his shirt-bosom faultlessly white, the woodpecker works like some Balzac in his garret, making the tree-top lively as he spars with his fellow-Bohemians; and being sure himself of a tree, and clinging to it with both tail and talons, he esteems everything else that lives upon it to be an insect at which he may run his bill or spit his tongue—that tongue which is rooted in the brain itself.
In the hollow golden bowl of echoing evening the sailor noted, too, the flicker, in golden pencilled wings and back of speckled umber and mottled white breast, with coal-black collar and neck and head of cinnamon. His golden tail droops far below his perch, and, running downward along the tree-trunk, it flashes in the air like a sceptre over the wood-lice he devours with his pickaxe bill. "Go to the ant, thou sluggard!" was an instigation to murder in the flicker, who loves young ants as much as wild-cherries or Indian corn, and is capable of taking any such satire seriously upon things to eat. Not so elfin and devilish as the small black woodpecker, he is full of bolder play.
The redbird, like the unclaimed blood of Abel, flew to the little trees that grew low, as if to cover Abel's altar; the jack-snipe chirped in the swampy spots, like a divinity student, on his clean, long legs, probing with his bill and critical eye the Scriptures of the fields; the quail piped like an old bachelor with family cares at last, as he led his mate where the wild seeds were best; and through the air darted voices of birds forsaken or on doctor's errands, crying "Phœbe? Phœbe?" or "Killed he! killed he!"
"Are you a dealer?" asked the gentleman of Jimmy Phœbus.
"Just a little that way," said Jimmy, warily, "when I kin git somethin' cheap."
The stranger had a pair of keen, dancing eyes, and a long, eloquent, silver-gray face that might have suited agreat general, so fine was its command, and yet too narrowly dancing in the eyes, like spiders in a well, disturbing the mirror there.
"Ha!" chuckled the man, as if his eyes had chuckled, so poorly did that sound represent his lordly stature and look of high spirit—"ha! that's what brings them all to my neighbor Johnson: a fair quotient!"
"Quotient?" repeated Jimmy.
"Johnson's a great factor hereabout," continued the military-looking man, bending his handsome eyes on the bay captain, as if there was a business secret between them, and peering at once mischievously and nobly; "he makes the quotient to suit. He leaves the suttle large and never stints the cloff."
"He don't narry a feller down to the cloth he's got, sir?" assented Jimmy, dubiously.
"Why should he? His equation is simple: I suppose you know what it is."
"Not ezackly," answered Phœbus, pricking up his ears to learn.
"Well, it is force and class sympathy against a dead quantity: laws which have no consignees, cattle which have no lawyer and no tongue, rights which have lapsed by their assertion being suspended, till demand and supply, like a pair of bulldogs, tear what is left to pieces. Armed with hisca. sa., my neighbor Johnson offsets everybody'sfi. fa., serves his writ the first, and makes to gentlemen like you a satisfactory quotient. But he cuts no capers with Isaac and Jacob Cannon!"
"I expect now that you are Jacob Cannon?" remarked the tawny sailor, not having understood a word of what preceded. "If that's the case, I'm glad to know your name, and thank you for givin' me this lift."
By a bare nod, just intelligible, Mr. Cannon signified that the guess would do; and still meditating aloud in his small, grand way, continued:
"We let neighbor Johnson and his somewhat peculiar mother-in-law make such commerce as suits him, provided he studies to give us no inconvenience. That is his equation; with his quotient we have no concern other than our slight interest in his wastage, as when Madame Cannon rides down to change a bill and leaves an order for supplies—rum, chiefly, I believe. Gentlemen like you come into this country to deal, replevin, or what not, and we say to you all, 'Don't tread on us—that is all.' We shall not look into your parcels, nor lie awake of nights to hear alarms; but harm Isaac and Jacob Cannon one ha'pence andlevari facias, fi. fa.!"
"And fee-fo-fum," ejaculated Jimmy, cheerfully; "I've hearn it before."
Looking again with some curiosity at his companion, Phœbus saw that he was not beyond fifty years of age, of a spare, lofty figure—at least six feet four high—sitting straight and graceful as an Indian, his clothes well-tailored, his countenance and features both stern and refined; every feature perfected, and all keen without being hard or angular—and yet Jimmy did not like him. There seemed to have been made a commodore or a general—some one designed for deeds of chivalry and great philanthropy; and yet around and between the dancing eyes spider lines were drawn, as if the fine high brain of Jacob Cannon had put aside matters that matched it and meddled with nothing that ascended higher above the world than the long white bridge of his nose. His sentiments apparently fell no further towards his heart than that; his brain belonged to the bridge of his nose.
"Another Meshach Milburn, by smoke!" concluded Jimmy.
After a little pause Phœbus inquired into the character of the people in this apparently new region of country.
"The quotient of much misplanting and lawyering is the lands on the Nanticoke," spoke the gray-nosed Apollo; "the piece of country directly before us, in the rear of my neighbor Johnson's cross-roads, was an old Indian reservation for seventy years, and so were three thousand acres to our right, on Broad Creek. The Indian is a bad factor to civilize his white neighbors; he does not know the luxury of the law, that grand contrivance to make the equation between the business man and the herd. Ha, ha!"
Mr. Cannon chuckled as if he, at least, appreciated the law, and turned the fine horsy bridge of his nose, all gray with dancing eyelight, enjoyingly upon Mr. Phœbus.
"The Indians were long imposed upon, and when they went away, at the brink of the Revolutionary War, they left a demoralized white race; and others who moved in upon the deserted lands of the Nanticokes were, if possible, more Indian than the Indians. This peninsula never produced a great Indian, but when Ebenezer Johnson settled on Broad Creek it possessed a greater savage than Tecumseh. He took what he wanted and appealed to nature, like the Indian. He stole nothing; he merely took it. He served, with anything convenient, from his fists to a blunderbuss, hisfi. fa.and hisca. sa.upon wondering but submissive mankind. Need I say that this was before the perfect day of Isaac and Jacob Cannon?"
"They would have socked it to him, I reckon," Jimmy exclaimed, consonantly.
Mr. Jacob Cannon gave a tender smile, such as the gray horse emits at the prospect of oats, and continued:
"Such was the multiplicand to make the future race. Here, too, raged the boundary-line debate between Penns and Calverts, with occasional raids and broken heads, and a noble suit in chancery of fifty years, till no man's title was known, and, instead of improving their lands, our voluptuous predecessors improved chiefly their opportunities. You cut sundry cords of wood and hauled it to the landing, and Ebenezer Johnson coolly scowed it overto his paradise at the mouth of Broad Creek. You had a little parcel of negroes, but the British war-ships, in two successive wars, lay in the river mouth and beckoned them off. Having no interest in any certain property, the foresters of the Nanticoke would rather trade with the enemy than fight for foolish ideas; and so this region was more than half Tory, and is still half passive, the other half predatory. To neither half of such a quotient belongs the house of Isaac and Jacob Cannon!"
His nostrils swelled a trifle with military spirit, and he raised the bridge of his nose delicately, turning to observe his instinctive companion.
"If it's any harm I won't ask it," the easy-going mariner spoke, "but air you two Cannons ary kin to ole Patty Cannon?"
Mr. Cannon smiled.
"In Adam all sinned—there we may have been connected," he said. "The question you ask may one day be actionable, sir. The Cannons are a numerous people in our region, of fair substance, such as we have, but they showed nothing to vary the equation of subsistence here till there arose the mother of Isaac and Jacob Cannon. She was a remarkable woman; unassisted, she procured the charter for Cannon's Ferry, and made the port settlement of that name by the importance her ferry acquired; and when she died there were found in her house nine hundred dollars in silver—for she never would take any paper money—the earnings of that sequestered ferry, to start her sons on their career. She knew the peculiar character of some of her neighbors—how lightlymeumandtuumsat upon their fears or consciences—but she kept no guard except her own good gray eyes and dauntless heart over that accumulating pile of little sixpences, for there was but one spirit as bold as she in all this region of the world—"
"And that, I reckon," observed Jimmy Phœbus, "was ole Patty Cannon herself."
Mr. Jacob Cannon slightly bowed his head, and spoke aloud from an inner communion:
"Forgive me, mother, that I make the comparison! Thy frugal oil, that burned with pure and lonely widow's flame at Cannon's Ferry window, the traveller hailed with comfort in his heart, and blessed the enterprise. But to compound the equation another unknown quantity of female force arose beside my mother's lamp. A certain young Cannon, distantly of our stock, must needs go see the world, and he returned with a fair demon of a bride, and settled, too, at Cannon's Ferry. He lived to see the wondrous serpent he had warmed in his arms, and died, they say, of the sting. But she lived on, and, shrinking back into the woods to a little farm my mother's sons rented to her, she lighted there a Jack-o'-the-lantern many a traveller has pursued who never returned to tell. With Ebenezer Johnson's progeny and her own siren sisters, who followed Madame Cannon to the Nanticoke, the nucleus of a settlement began, and has existed for twenty years, that only the Almighty'svenire faciascan explore."[2]
"That's my arrand, Jacob Cannon," quietly remarked Jimmy Phœbus. "I'm a pore man from Prencess Anne. If you took me for a nigger-dealer you did me as pore acompliment as when I asked if you was Patty Cannon's kin. But I have got just one gal to love and just one life to lose, an' if God takes me thar, I'm a-goin' to Johnson's Cross-roads."
Mr. Jacob Cannon turned and examined his companion with some twinkling care, but showed no personal concern.
"Every man must be his own security, my dark-skinned friend, till he can find a bailsman. That place I never take—neither the debtor's nor the security. The firm of Isaac and Jacob Cannon allows no trespass, and further concern themselves not. But we are at the Nanticoke."
"I'm obliged to you for the lift, Mr. Jacob Cannon," said Jimmy, springing down, "and hope you may never find it inconvenient to have let such a pack of wolves use your neighborhood to trespass on human natur."
Some piles of wood and an old wharf were at the river-side, and a little scow, half filled with water, and with only a broken piece of paddle in it, was the only boat the pungy captain could find. The merchant's buggy was soon out of sight, and the wide, gray Nanticoke, several hundred yards wide, and made wider by a broad river that flowed into it through low bluffs and levels immediately opposite, was receiving the strong shadows of approaching night, and the tide was running up it violent and deep.
Long lines of melancholy woods shut both these rivers in; an osprey suddenly struck the surface of the water, like a drowning man, and rose as if it had escaped fromsome demon in the flood; the silence following his plunge was deeper than ever, till a goatsucker, noiselessly making his zigzag chase, cried, as if out of eternal gloom, his solemn command to "Whippoor Will." Those notes repeated—as by some slave ordering his brother to be lashed or one sympathetic soul in perdition made the time-caller to another's misery—floated on the evening light as if the oars of Charon echoed on the Styx, and broken hearts were crossing over.
Alone, unintimidated, but not altogether comfortable, Jimmy Phœbus proceeded to bail out the old scow, and wished he had accepted one of Jack Wonnell's hats to do the task, and, when he had finished it, the stars and clouds were manœuvring around each other in the sky, with the clouds the more aggressive, and finally some drops of rain punctured the long, bare muscles of the inflowing tide, making a reticule of little pittings, like a net of beads on drifting women's tresses. As night advanced, a puffing something ascended the broad, black aisle of this forest river, and slowly the Norfolk steamboat rumbled past, with passengers for the Philadelphia stage. Then silence drew a sheet of fog around herself and passed into a cold torpor of repose, affected only by the waves that licked the shores with intermittent thirst.
The waterman, regretting a little that he had not taken his stand at Vienna, where human assistance might have been procured, and thinking that the poison airs might also afflict him with Meshach Milburn's complaints, fought sleep away till midnight, straining his eyes and ears ever and anon for signs of some sail; but nothing drew near, and he had insensibly closed his lids and might have soon been in deep sleep, but that he suddenly heard, between his dreams and this world, something like a little baby moaning in the night.
He sat up in the damp scow, where he had been lying, and listened with all his senses wide open, and once againthe cry was wafted upon the river zephyrs, and before it died away the sailor's paddle was in the water, and his frail, awkward vessel was darting across the tide.
He saw, in the black night, what none but a sailor's eyes would have seen, a thing not visible, but divined, coming along on the bosom of the river; and his ears saw it the clearer as that little cry continued—now stopped, now stifled, now rising, now nearly piercing; and then there was a growl, momentary and loud, and a rattle as of feet over wood, and a stroke or thud, or heavy concussion, and then a white thing rose up against the universal ink and rushed on the little scow, sucking water as it came—the cat-boat under full sail.
Phœbus had paddled for the opposite shore of the river to prevent the object of his quest escaping up the Northwest Fork, yet to be in its path if it beat up the main fork, and, by a piece of instinctive calculation, he had run nearly under the cat-boat bows.
"Ahoy, there!" cried Jimmy, standing up in his tipsy little skiff; "ahoy theEllenory Dennis!I'm a-comin' aboard."
And with this, the paddle still in his hand, and his knees and feet nearly sentient in their providence of uses, the sailor threw himself upon the low gunwale, and let it glide through his palms till he could see the man at the helm.
There was no light to be called so, but the helmsman was yet perceived by the sailor's experienced eyes, and he grappled the gunwale firmer, and, preparing to swing himself on board, shouted hoarsely,
"You Levin Dennis, I see you, by smoke! You know Jimmy Phœbus is your friend, an' come out of this Pangymonum an' stop a-breakin' of your mother's heart! Oh, I see you, my son!"
If he did see Levin Dennis, Levin did not see Jimmy Phœbus, nor apparently hear him, but stood motionlessat the helm as a frozen man, looking straight on in the night. The rigging made a little flapping, the rudder creaked on its hooks, but every human sound was still as the grave now, and the boy at the helm seemed petrified and deaf and blind.
The pungy captain's temper rose, his superstition not being equal to that of most people, and he cried again,
"You're a disgrace to the woman that bore you. Hell's a-waitin' for your pore tender body an' soul. Heave ahoy an' let drop that gaff, an' take me aboard, Levin!"
Still silent and passive as a stone, the youthful figure at the helm did not seem to breathe, and the cat-boat cut the water like a fish-hawk.
A flash of bright fire lighted up the vessel's side, a loud pistol-shot rang out, and the sailor's hands loosened from the gunwale and clutched at the air, and he felt the black night fall on him as if he had pulled down its ebony columns upon his head.
He knew no more for hours, till he felt himself lying in cold water and saw the gray morning coming through tree-boughs over his head. He had a thirsty feeling and pain somewhere, and for a few minutes did not move, but lay there on his shoulder, holding to something and guessing what it might be, and where he might be making his bed in this chilly autumn dawn.
His hand was clutching the a-stern plank of the old scow, and was so stiff he could not for some time open it. The scow was aground upon a marshy shore, in which some large trees grew, and were the fringes of a woods that deepened farther back.
"By smoke!" muttered Jimmy, "if yer ain't hokey-pokey. But I reckon I ain't dead, nohow."
With this he lifted the other hand, that had been stretched beneath his head, and was also numb with cramp and cold, and it was full of blood.
"Well," said Jimmy, "that feller did hit me; but, ifhe'll lend me his pistol, I'll fire a straighter slug than his'n. I wonder where it is."
Feeling around his head, the captain came to a raw spot, the touch of which gave him acute pain, and made the blood flow freshly as he withdrew his hand, and he could just speak the words, "Water, or I'll—" when he swooned away.
The sun was up and shining cheerily in the tree-tops as Phœbus, who was its name-bearer, recovered his senses again, and he bathed his face, still lying down, and tore a piece of his raiment off for a bandage, and, by the mirror of a still, green pool of water, examined his wound, which was in the fleshy part of his cheek—a little groove or gutter, now choked with almost dried blood, where the ball had ploughed a line. It had probably struck a bone, but had not broken it, and this had stunned him.
"I was so ugly before that Ellenory wouldn't more than half look at me," Jimmy mused, "an' now, I 'spect, she'll never kiss that air cheek."
He then bandaged his cheek roughly, sitting up, and took a survey of the scenery.
The river was here a full quarter of a mile wide, on the opposite shore bluffy, and in places bold, but, on the side where Phœbus had drifted with the tide, clutching his old scow with mortal grip, there extended a point of level woods and marsh or "cripple," as if by the action of some back-water, and this low ground appeared to have a considerable area, and was nowhere tilled or fenced, or gave any signs of being visited.
But the opposite or northern shore was quite otherwise; there the river had a wide bend or hollow to receive two considerable creeks, and changed its course almost abruptly from west to southwest, giving a grand view of its wide bosom for the distance of more than two miles into Maryland; and the prospect was closed in that direction by a whitish-looking something, like lime orshell piles, standing against the background of pale blue woods and bluffs.
Right opposite the spot where Phœbus had been stranded, a cleared farm came out to the Nanticoke, affording a front of only a single field, on the crest of a considerable sand-bluff—elevations looking magnified here, where nature is so level; and at one end of this field, which was planted in corn that was now clinging dry to the naked stalks, an old lane descended to a shell-paved wharf of a stumpy, square form; and almost at the other, or western, end of the clearing stood a respectable farm-house of considerable age, with a hipped roof and three queer dormer windows slipping down the steeper half below, and two chimneys, not built outside of the house, as was the general fashion, but naturally rising out of the old English-brick gables. All between the gables was built of wood; a porch of one story occupied nearly half the centre of that side of the house facing the river; and to the right, against the house and behind it, were kitchen, smoke-house, corn-cribs, and other low tenements, in picturesque medley; while to the left crouched an old, low building on the water's edge, looking like a brandy-still or a small warehouse. The road from the wharf and lane passed along a beach, and partly through the river water, to enter a gate between this shed and the dwelling; and from the garden or lawn, on the bluff before the latter, arose two tall and elegant trees, a honey-locust and a stalwart mulberry.
"Now, I never been by this place before," Jimmy Phœbus muttered, "but, by smoke! yon house looks to me like Betty Twiford's wharf, an', to save my life, I can't help thinkin' yon white spots down this side of the river air Sharptown. If that's the case, which state am I in?"
He rose to his feet, bailed the scow, which was nearly full of water, and began to paddle along the shore, and, seeing something white, he landed and parted the bushes,and found it to be a stone of a bluish marble, bearing on one side the letter M, and on the other the letter P, and a royal crown was also carved upon it.
"Yer's one o' Lord Baltimore's boundary stones," Phœbus exclaimed. "Now see the rascality o' them kidnappers! Yon house, I know, is Twiford's, because it's a'most on the state-line, but, I'm ashamed to say, it's a leetle in Maryland. And that lane, coming down to the wharf, is my way to Joe Johnson's Pangymonum at his cross-roads."
A sound, as of some one singing, seemed to come from the woods near by, and Phœbus, listening, concluded that it was farther along the water, so he paddled softly forward till a small cove or pool led up into the swamp, and its shores nowhere offered a dry landing; yet there were recent foot-marks deeply trodden in the bog, and disclosed up the slope into the woods, and from their direction seemed to come the mysterious chanting.
"My head's bloody and I'm wet as a musk-rat, so I reckon I ain't afraid of gittin' a little muddy," and with this the navigator stepped from the scow in swamp nearly to his middle, and pulled himself up the slope by main strength.
"I believe my soul this yer is a island," Jimmy remarked; "a island surrounded with mud, that's wuss to git to than a water island."
The tall trees increased in size as he went on and entered a noble grove of pines, through whose roar, like an organ accompanied by a human voice, the singing was heard nearer and nearer, and, following the track of previous feet, which had almost made a path, Phœbus came to a space where an axe had laid the smaller bushes low around a large loblolly pine that spread its branches like a roof only a few feet from the ground; and there, fastened by a chain to the trunk, which allowed her to go around and around the tree, and tread a nearly bare place in the pine droppings or "shats," sat a black woman,singing in a long, weary, throat-sore wail. Jimmy listened to a few lines:
"Deep-en de woun' dy han's have madeIn dis weak, helpless soul,Till mercy wid its mighty aidDe-scen to make me whole;Yes, Lord!De-scen to make me whole."
A little negro child, perhaps three years old, was lying asleep on the ground at the woman's feet, in an old tattered gray blanket that might have been discarded from a stable. Near the child was a wooden box, in which were a coarse loaf of corn-bread and some strips of bacon, and a wooden trough, hollowed out of a log, contained water. The woman's face was scratched and bruised, and, as she came to some dental sounds in her chant, her teeth were revealed, with several freshly missing in front, and her lips were swollen and the gums blistered and raw.
She glanced up as Phœbus came in sight, looked at him a minute in blank curiosity, as if she did not know what kind of animal he was, and then continued her song, wearily, as if she had been singing it for days, and her mind had gone into it and was out of her control. As she moved her feet from time to time, the chain rattled upon her ankles.
"Well," said Jimmy, "if this ain't Pangymonum, I reckon I'll find it at Johnson's Cross-roads! Git up thar, gal, an' let me see what ails you."
The woman rose mechanically, still singing in the shrill, cracked, weary drone, and, as she rose, the baby awoke and began to cry, and she stooped and took it up, and, patting it with her hands, sang on, as if she would fall asleep singing, but could not.
The chain, strong and rusty, had been very recently welded to her feet by a blacksmith; the fresh rivet attested that, and there were also pieces of charcoal in the pine strewings, as if fire had been brought there for smith's uses. Jimmy Phœbus took hold of the chain and examined it link by link till it depended from a powerful staple driven to the heart of the pine-tree; though rusty, it was perfect in every part, and the condition of the staple showed that it was permanently retained in its position, as if to secure various and successive persons, while the staple itself had been driven above the reach of the hands, as by a man standing on some platform or on another's shoulders.
Phœbus took the chain in his short, powerful arms, and, giving a little run from the root of the tree, threw all the strength of his compact, heavy body into a jerk, and let his weight fall upon it, but did not produce the slightest impression.
"There's jess two people can unfasten this chain," exclaimed Jimmy, blowing hard and kneading his palms, after two such exertions, "one of em's a blacksmith and t'other's a woodchopper. Gal, how did you git yer?"
The woman, a young and once comely person of about twenty-eight years of age, sang on a moment as if she did not understand the question, till Phœbus repeated it with a kinder tone:
"Pore, abused creatur, tell me as your friend! I ain't none of these kidnappers. Git your pore, scattered wits together an tell a friend of all women an' little childern how he kin help you, fur time's worth a dollar a second, an' bloody vultures are nigh by. Speak, Mary!"
The universal name seemed timely to this woman; she stopped her chanting and burst into tears.
"My husband brought me here," she said, between her long sobs. "He sold me. I give him everything I had and loved him, too, and he sold me—me and my baby."
"I reckon you don't belong fur down this way, Mary? You don't talk like it."
"No, sir; I belong to Philadelphia. I was a free woman and a widow; my husband left me a little money and a little house and this child; another man come and courted me, a han'some mulatto man, almost as white as you. He told me he had a farm in Delaware, and wanted me to be his wife; he promised me so much and was so anxious about it, that I listened to him. Oh, he was a beautiful talker, and I was lonesome and wanted love. I let him sell my house and give him the money, and started a week ago to come to my new home. Oh, he did deceive me so; he said he loved me dearly."
She began to cry again, and her mind seemed to wander, for the next sentence was disconnected. Jimmy took the baby in his arms and kissed it without any scruples, and the child's large, black eyes looked into his as if he might be its own father, while he dandled it tenderly.
"The foxes has come an' barked at me two nights," said the woman; "they wanted the bacon, I 'spect. The water-snakes has crawled around here in the daytime, and the buzzards flew right down before me and looked up, as if they thought I ought to be dead. But I wasn't afraid: that man I give my love to was so much worse than them, that I just sung and let them look at me."
"You say he sold you, Mary?"
The woman rubbed her weary eyes and slowly recollected where she had left off.
"We moved our things on a vessel to Delaware, and come up a creek to a little town in the marshes, and there we started for my husband's farm. He said we had come to it in the night. I couldn't tell, but I saw a house in the woods, and was so tired I went to sleep with my baby there, and in the night I found men in the room, and one of them, a white man, was tying my feet."
A crow cawed with a sound of awe in the pine tops, and squirrels were running tamely all round about as she hesitated.
"I thought then of the kidnappers of Delaware, for I had heard about them, and I jumped out of bed and fought for my life. They knocked me down and the rope around my feet tripped me up; but I fought with my teeth after my hands was tied, too, and I bit that white man's knees, and then he picked up a fire-shovel, or something of iron, and knocked my teeth out. My last hope was almost gone when I saw my husband coming in, and I cried to him, 'Save me! save me, darling!' He had a rope in his hand, and, before I could understand it, he had slipped it over my neck and choked me."
"Your own husband? I can't believe it, to save my life!"
"I didn't believe it, neither, till I heard him say, when they loosened the slipknot that had strangled me—the voice was his I had trusted so much; I never could forget it!—'Eben,' he said, 'I've took down every mole and spot on her body and can swear to' em, for I've learned 'em by heart, and you won't have no trouble a-sellin' her, as she can't testify."
"The imp of Pangymonum!" Jimmy cried. "He had married you to note down your marks, and by' em swear you to be a slave!"
"The white man tried to sell me to a farmer, and then I told what I had heard them say. He believed me, and told them the mayor of Philadelphia had a reward out for them, for kidnappin' free people, already. Then they talked together—a little scared they was—and tied me again, and brought me on a cart through the woods to the river and fetched me here, and chained me, and told me if I ever said I was free, to another man, they meant to sell my baby and to drown me in the river."
She finished with a chilly tremor and a low wail like an infant, but the sailor passed her baby into her arms to engage her, and said:
"The Lord is still a-countin' of his sparrows, or Iwouldn't have been on this arrand, by smoke! To drift yer, hangin' senseless to that ole scow, must have been to save you, Mary. This is a island where they chains up property, I reckon, that is bein' follered up too close. Time's very precious, Mary, but I've got a sailor's knife yer, an' I'll stay to cut the staple out o' this ole pine if they come an' kill me. You take an' wash my face off outen that water-trough while I bite a bit of the bacon."
He took the child again and amused it while the woman carefully cleaned his wound and rebandaged it so that he could breathe and see and eat, though the cotton folds wrapped in much of his face like a mask. He then examined the chain again, especially where it was rivetted at the feet, and lifted a large iron ball weighing several pounds, which was also affixed to her ankle, so that she could not climb the tree. Her ankle he found blistered by the red-hot rivet being smithed so barbarously close to the flesh.
"Don't leave me, oh! don't leave me here to die," the woman pleaded, as he started into the woods.
"I'll stay by you an' we'll die together, if we must; but it's not my idee to die at all, Mary. I'm goin' to bring that air scow ashore while I cut a hickory, if I can find one, to break this yer chain."
Plunging again into the mud nearly to his waist, Phœbus pulled the scow up into the woods, and had barely concealed himself when he saw come out of the creek below Twiford's house a cat-boat like theEllenora Dennis, and stand towards the island in the cripple.
"The tide's agin' em, an' they must make a tack to get yer," Jimmy muttered; "but I'm afraid this knife will have to go to the heart of some son of Pangymonum in ten minutes, or Ellenory Dennis never agin be pestered by her ugly lover."
He was seized with a certain frenzy of strength and discernment at the danger he was in, and, as he carriedthe scow onward and across the woodland island, heavy as it was, he also noted a single small hickory tree on that farther margin, and threw himself against it and bent it down, and plunged his knife into the straining fibres so that it crackled and splintered in his hand. He leaped to the tree and scaled it as he had often climbed a mast, and he thrust the sapling under the staple, trimming the point down with the knife as he clutched the tree by his knees, and then, catching the young hickory like a lever, he dropped down the pine trunk and got his shoulder under the sapling and brought the weight of his body desperately against it. The staple bent upward in the tree, but did not loosen.
At that instant the scraping of a boat upon the mud was heard, and the black woman fell upon her knees.
"Pray, but do it soft," Jimmy whispered; "an' not a cry from the child, or there'll be a murder!"
He had rapidly trimmed the hickory stem of its branches while he spoke, so that it could penetrate the arborage of the tree from above, and climbing higher, like a cat, he worked the point of the lever downwards into the now crooked staple, and threw himself out of the tree against the sapling, which bent like a bow nearly double, but would not break, and, as the staple yielded and flew out, the chain and the deliverer fell together on the soft pine litter.
"Hark!" exclaimed a voice through the woods.
"What was it?" asked another voice.
"Come!" Phœbus murmured, and gathered together the woman, the child, and the chain and ball, and stepped, long and silent as a rabbit's leaps, through the awe-hushed pines, carrying the whole burden on his shoulders.
He sat them in the scow, which sank to the edges, and, covered by a protruding point of woods, pushed off into the deep river, yet guiding the frail vessel in to the sidesof the stream, away from the influence of the out-running tide. As the scow turned the first crease or elbow in the river, it began to sink.
"If you make a sound you are a slave fur life," whispered the waterman, as he slipped overboard and began to swim, with his hand upon the stern. As he did this, straining every muscle of his countenance to keep afloat, the wound in his cheek began to bleed again, and he felt his strength going. Down, down he began to settle, till the water reached his nostrils, and the woman heard him sigh as he was sinking:
"I'd do it—an' die—agin—fur—Ellenory. God bless her!"
The scow, now full of water, turned upside down, and threw mother and child into the stream, and the child was gone beneath the surface before the woman could catch herself upon a sunken branch of an imbedded tree; and, as she gasped there, the body of the pungy captain swept past her and she caught him by the hair, and he clutched her with the drowning instinct, and down they went together, like husband and wife, in nature's contempt of distinctions between living worms.
They went down to the very bottom, but not to drown; for the old tree, having fallen where it grew in other years, was sustained upon its limbs, and made an invisible yet sure pathway to the shore. The long chain and the iron ball fettered to the colored woman's foot, however, deprived her for a few moments of all power to step along the slippery, submerged trunk, and, with her soul full of agony for her child, which she no longer saw, she was about to let go of her deliverer's body and throw herself also into the river, to die with them, when the old scow, having emptied itself of the water, reappeared at the surface and struck the woman a buoyant blow that altered the course of her thought.
"Pore, brave man," the woman gasped. "He's got awife, maybe. He said, 'God bless her,' an' he give his life for a poor creature like me. God has took my baby. I can't do nothing for it now, but maybe I can save this man's life before I die."
Indifferent to her personal fate, she drew intelligence from her spirit of sacrifice, which is the only thing better than learning. She pushed the scow down and under Phœbus with her remaining hand, till it relieved her of a portion of the weight of his body, and rose up, half-bearing the bronze-faced sailor's form, and animating her generous purpose with the honest and happy smile he wore upon his face, even in the vestibule of the eternal palace. Then, gathering the long meshes of the iron chain up from its termination at her feet, she threw the longer portion of it into the scow, so that it no longer became entangled in the cross-branches and knots below, and she could lift also the iron ball sufficiently to glide her feet along the tree.
With pain and difficulty, lessened by self-forgetfulness, she pushed the scow and the body to the foot of the tree, and, feeling around its old roots for further support, the red-eyed terrapins arose and swam around her, disturbed in their possessions; but she feared no reptiles any more, since Death, the mighty crocodile, had eaten the babe that she had nursed but this morning.