She had intelligent remembrance enough to think of all the precautions her deliverer had taken, and, when she had dragged his body on the shore into the dense, scrubby woods, she also drew out the little scow and heaped some dead brush upon it, and had scarcely concealed herself when she heard voices from the river, and the report of a sail swung around upon its boom, and of feet upon a deck. The voices said:
"If she's got off to Delaware, Joe Johnson won't have long to stay on his visit; for all the beaks will gather fur him an' be started by John M. Clayton."
"I'm sorry fur Joe," answered another voice; "he hoped to make one more big scoop this trip, an' quit the Corners fur good."
"Let us sail by ole Ebenezer Johnson's roost at Broad Creek mouth, an' peep up both forks of the river," said the other voice, receding; "it's only a mile and a half. If we discover nothin', we'll run down the river and inquire at the landings as fur as Vienny."
The colored woman now worked with all her strength to revive the insensible sailor, rolling him, rubbing his body till her elbows seemed almost to be dropping off, and then rubbing his great, broad breast with her head and face and neck. She breathed into his mouth the breath heaven vouchsafed to Hagar as bountifully as to Sarah, and, wringing out portions of her garments and hanging them at sunny exposures to dry, she substituted them, in her exhausted intervals, for the wet clothing of the man; and as she worked, with a hollow, desolate heart, she sobbed:
"Lord, gi' me this man's life! O Lord, that took my chile, I will have this life back!"
Crying and weeping, fainting and laboring, the moments, it seemed the very hours, ran by and still he did not waken; and still, with all that noble strength that makes the fields of white men grow and blossom under the negro's unthanked toil, the widow and childless one fought on for this cold lump of brother nature.
He warmed, he breathed, he groaned, he spoke!
His voice was like a happy sigh, as of one disturbed near the end of a comforting morning nap in summer:
"You thar, Mary?"
He stared around with difficulty, his wounded face now clotted and stained with blood, and his eyes next looked an inquiry so kind and apprehensive that she answered it, to save him breath:
"Baby's drowned. God does best!"
He reached his hand to hers—she was almost naked to the waist, having sacrificed all she had, the greatest of which was modesty, to bring back that life in him which came naked and unashamed into the world—and he put his little strength into the grasp.
"Mary," he exhaled, "why didn't you ketch the baby and leave me go?"
"Oh, dearly as I loved it," the woman answered, "I'm glad you come up under my hands instead. You can do good: you're a white man. Baby would have only been a poor slave, or a free negro nobody would care for."
"I mean to do good, if the Lord lets me," sighed the sailor; "I mean to go and die agin for human natur at Johnson's Cross-roads."
The day was far advanced when Jimmy Phœbus was strong enough to rise and walk, and leave the refuge in the woods. He advised the colored woman to crawl through the pine-trees along the margin, while he paddled in the old scow in the shadow of the forest, which now lay strong upon the river's breast.
At the distance of about a mile, Broad Creek, like a tributary river, flowed into the Nanticoke from the east, fully a quarter of a mile wide, and half a mile up this stream an old, low, extended, weather-blackened house faced the river, and seemed to grin out of its broken ribs and hollow window-sockets like a traitor's skull discolored upon a gibbet. It was falling to pieces, and along its roof-ridge a line of crows balanced and croaked, as if they had fine stories to tell and weird opinions to pass upon the former inhabitants of the tenement.
"There, I have hearn tell," said Jimmy, as he drew in to the bank, and took the woman into the scow and began to tow her along the beach, wading in the water, "there, I have hearn tell, lived the pirate of Broad Creek, ole Ebenezer Johnson, who was shot soon after the war of '12 at Twiford's house down yonder."
"For kidnapping free people?" asked the woman, without interest, the question coming from her desolate heart.
"In them days they didn't kidnap much; it was jest a-beginnin'. The war of '12 busted everything on the bay, burned half a dozen towns, kept the white men layin' out an' watchin', and made loafers of half of 'em, an' brought bad volunteers an' militia yer to trifle with the porer gals, an' some of them strangers stuck yer after the war was done. I don't know whar ole Ebenezer come from; some says this, an' some that. All we know is, that he an' the Hanlen gals, one of 'em Patty Cannon, was the head devils in an' after the war."
"It's a bad-lookin' ole house, sir. See, yonder's a coon runnin' out of the door. Oh! I hear my child cryin' everywhere I look."
"The British begun to run the black people off in the war. The black people wanted to go to 'em. The British filled the islands in Tangier yer with nigger camps; they was a goin' to take this whole peninsuly, an' collect an' drill a nigger army on it to put down Amerikey. When the war was done, the British sailed away from Chesapeake Bay with thousands of them colored folks, an' then the people yer begun to hate the free niggers."
"For lovin' liberty?" the woman sighed, looking at the ball, which had galled her ankle bloody.
"They hated free niggers as if they was all Tories an' didn't love Amerikey. So, seein' the free niggers hadn't no friends, these Johnsons an' Patty Cannon begun to steal 'em, by smoke! There was only a million niggers in the whole country; Louisiana was a-roarin' for 'em;every nigger was wuth twenty horses or thirty yokes of oxen, or two good farms around yer, an' these kidnappers made money like smoke, bought the lawyers, went into polytics, an' got sech a high hand that they tried a murderin' of the nigger traders from Georgey an' down thar, comin' yer full of gold to buy free people. That give 'em a back-set, an' they hung some of Patty's band—some at Georgetown, some at Cambridge."
"If my baby's made white in heaven, I'm afraid I won't know him," the woman said, nodding, and wandering in her mind.
"At last the Delawareans marched on Johnson's Cross-roads an' cleaned his Pangymonum thar out, an' guarded him, and sixteen pore niggers in chains he'd kidnapped, to Georgetown jail. Young John M. Clayton was paid by the Phildelfy Quakers to git him convicted. Johnson was strong in the county—we're in it now, Sussex—an' if Clayton hadn't skeered the jury almost to death, it would have disagreed. He held 'em over bilin' hell, an' dipped 'em thar till the court-room was like a Methodis' revival meetin', with half that jury cryin' 'Save me, save me, Lord!' while some of 'em had Joe Johnson's money in their pockets. Joe was licked at the post, banished from the state, an' so skeered that he laid low awhile, goin' off somewhar—to Missoury, or Floridey, or Allybamy. But Patty Cannon never flinched; she trained the young boys around yer to be her sleuth-hounds an' go stealin' for her; an', till she dies, it's safer to be a chicken than a free nigger. They stole you, pore creatur' from Phildelfy, an' they steal 'em in Jersey and away into North Carliney; fur Joe Johnson's a smart feller fur enterprise, and Patty Cannon's deep as death an' the grave."
Phœbus looked at the woman sitting in the scow, and he saw that she was fast asleep; his tale having no power to startle her senses, now worn-out by every infliction.
"I must git that ball an' chain off," the sailor said; "but iron, in these ole sandy parts, is scarce as gold."
He lifted her out of the scow and laid her in the shade, and began to explore the old house. To his joy, he found the iron crane still hanging in the chimney, and signs of recent fire.
"These yer ole cranes was valleyble once," Jimmy said, "an' in the wills they left 'em to their children like farms, an' lawsuits was had over the bilin' pots an' the biggest kittles. It broke a woman's heart to git a little kittle left her, an' the big-kittled gal was jest pestered with beaux. But, by smoke! we're a-makin' iron now in Amerikey! Kittles is cheap, and that's why this crane is left by robbers an' gypsies after they used it."
He twisted the crane out of the bricks on which it was hinged, and some of the mantel jamb fell down.
"Hallo!" cried Jimmy, "what's this a rollin' yer? A shillin', by George! I say, by George, this time caze ole George the Third's picter's on it. Maybe thar's more of 'em."
He pulled a few bricks out of the jamb, and raked the hollow space inside with his hand, and brought forth a steel purse of English manufacture, filled with shillings at one end, and fifteen golden guineas at the other; they rolled out through the decayed filigree, rusted, probably, by the rain percolating through the chimney, and the purse crumbled to iron-mould in his hand.
"'The Lord is my shepherd,'" said the sailor, reverently; "'I shall not want. He leadeth me by the still waters.' How beautiful Ellenory says it. Look thar at the waters of the Nanticoke, beautiful as silver. Lord, make 'em pure waters an' free, to every pore creatur!"
"To who! to who!" screamed a voice out of the hollow chimney.
"Well," answered Jimmy, hardly excited, "I ain't partickler. Ha! I thought I knew you, Barney," he continued, as an owl fluttered out and hopped up a ruined stairway.
"Now, British money ain't coined by Uncle Sam; what is the date? I can make figgers out easy: Eighteen hundred and fifteen!' I was about to do Ebenezer Johnson the onjustice of saying that he'd sold his country out to ole Admiral Cockburn, but the war was done when this money was coined. Whose was it?"
He removed more carefully some of the bricks, to put his hand in the hollow depository left there, and, feeling around and higher up, brought out the bronze hilt of a sword, on which was a name.
"Who would have thought this was a house of learnin'?" Jimmy said, dubiously. "I can't read it. By smoke! maybe they've murdered somebody yer. I reckon he was British. Ellenory kin read it, if I live to see her agin."
There was nothing more, and, as he left the rotting old house, a crash and a cloud of smoke rose up behind him, and the chimney fell into the middle of the floor.
With the crane's sharp wrought-iron point and long leverage the pungy captain succeeded, after tedious efforts, in breaking the links of the chain and also in removing the linked cannon-ball from the woman's foot, but he could not remove the iron band and link around her ankle.
"God bless you!" exclaimed the woman. "It's a sin to say so, but I feel as if I could fly since that dreadful weight is off. Oh, I want to fly, for I dreamed of my baby, an' he smiled at me from heaven as if he said, 'I'm happy, mamma!'"
"You don't owe me nothin', Mary. I love a widder, as you air, an' she begged me to come yer. When you git to Prencess Anne, whar I want you to go, find Ellenory Dennis, an' tell her I've seen her boy, an' I'll bring him back if I kin."
"Princess Anne? where is it?"
"It's maybe, forty mile from yer, Mary; half-way between sunrise and sunset."
"Right south, sir?"
"That's it. Now I'll tell you how to git thar. Take this old woods road along Broad Creek and walk to Laurel, five miles; it's a little town on the creek. Keep in under the woods, but don't lose the road, fur every foot of it's dangerous to niggers. You kin git thar, maybe, by dark. I don't know nobody thar, Mary, an' I can't write, fur I never learned how. But you go right to the house of some preacher of the Gospel, and tell him a lie."
Mary opened her eyes.
"I wouldn't have you tell a lie to anybody but a good man," continued Phœbus, "fur then it's so close to the Lord it won't git fur an' pizen many, as lies always does. You must tell that preacher that you're the runaway slave of Judge Custis of Prencess Anne, an' you're sorry you run away, an' want to go home."
"Oh, sir, you are not like my wicked husband, trying to sell me too?"
"No, Mary, bad as you've been used, faith's your only sure friend. If you was to tell the preacher you had been kidnapped, he'd, maybe, be afraid to help you. They're a timid set down yer on any subject concernin' niggers; these preachers will help save black folks' souls, but never rescue their pore broken bodies. When you tell him you are the slave of a rich man like Judge Custis, he'll jump at the chance to do the Judge a favor, an' tell you that you do right to go back to your master. That's whair he's a liar, Mary—so he'll scratchyourlie off."
"They'll turn me back at Princess Anne, and wont know me, maybe."
"Not if you do this, Mary. Make them take you to Judge Custis's daughter—the one that's just been married. Tell her you want to speak to her privately. Then tell her the nigger-skinned man—I'm him—that she sent away with her mother, found you whar you was chained in the woods. Take this link of the chain to show her. Tell her you want to be her cook till the one that run away is found."
"I'll do it, sir. I've got no home to go to, now."
"Tell her all you remember. Tell her not to tell Ellenory any of my troubles. Tell her I'm a-startin' for Pangymonum, an', if I die, it's nothin' but a bachelor keepin' his own solitary company. Yer's a gold piece an' three silver pieces I found, Mary, to pay your way. Good-bye."
"Won't you give me your knife?" asked the woman.
"What fur, Mary?"
"To kill myself if they kidnap me again."
"I have nothin' else to fight for my life with," said Phœbus. "No, you must not do that. Keep in the woods to Laurel."
She fell on the ground and kissed his knees, and bathed them with her tears.
"I do have faith, master," she said, "faith enough to be your slave."
"I'd cry a little, too," said Jimmy, twitching his eyes, as the woman disappeared in the forest, "if I knowed how to do it; but, by smoke! the wind on the bay's dried up my tear ponds. I'll bury these curiosities right yer, with this chain and ball, and put some old bricks around' em outen the chimney they come from."
He dug a hole with his knife, carefully cutting out a piece of the sod, and restoring it over the buried articles; and, after notching some trees to mark the place, he pushed in the scow again into Broad Creek, and descended the Nanticoke on the falling tide to Twiford's wharf.
Dragging the scow up the bed of a creek to conceal it,he discovered another boundary stone. A beach led under the cover of a sandy bluff to the river gate of Twiford's comfortable house, and he boldly entered the lane and lawn, saying to himself:
"I reckon a feller can ask to buy one squar meal a day in a free country, fur I'm hungry."
Even in that day the house was probably seventy years old, roofed by an artistic shingler in lines like old lace-work, the short roofs over the three pretty dormers like laced bib-aprons, the window-casements in small checkers of dark glass, the roof capacious as an armadillo's back or land-turtle's; but half of it was almost as straight as the walls, and the small, foreign bricks in the gables, glazed black and dark-red alternately, were laid by conscientious workmen, and bade fair to stand another hundred years, as they smoked their tidy chimney pipes from hearty stomachs of fireplaces below.
Standing beneath the honey-locust tree at the lawn-gate, the sailor beheld an extensive prospect of the river Nanticoke, bending in a beautiful curve, like the rim of a silver salver, towards the south, the blue perspective of the surrounding woods fading into the azure bluffs on the farther shore, where, as he now identified it, the hamlet of Sharptown assumed the mystery and similitude of a city by the enchantment of distance. A large brig was riding up the river under the afternoon breeze, carrying the English flag at her spanker. The wild-fowl, flying in V-formed lines, like Hyads astray, flickered on the salver of the river like house-flies. Some fishermen distantly appeared, human, yet nearly stationary, as if to enliven a dream, and the bees in a row of hives kept murmuring near by, increasing the restful sense in the heart and the ears.
"Why cannot human natur be happy yer, pertickler with its gal—some one like Ellenory?" Phœbus thought; "why must it git cruel an' desperate for money, lookin'out on this dancin' water, an' want to turn this trance into a Pangymonum?"
He crossed the lane to a squatty old structure of brick by the water-side, and peeped in.
"A still, by smoke!" he said. "If it ain't apple brandy may I forgit my compass! No, it's peach brandy. Well, anyway, it's hot enough; an' this, I 'spect, is what started the Pangymonum."
He took a stout drink, and it revived his weakened system, and he bathed his head in its strong alcohol. He then returned to the lawn and walked around the house, peeping into the lower rooms—of which there were two in the main building, the kitchen being an appendage—but saw nobody. The porch in the rear extended the full width of the house, unlike the smaller shed in front, which only covered two doors, standing curiously side by side.
Completely sheltered by the longer porch, Phœbus, looking into a window, there saw a table already set with a clean cloth, and bread and cold chicken, and a pitcher of creamy milk, with a piece of ice floating in it. On either side of a large fireplace at the table-side was a door, one open, and leading by a small winding stair to the floor above. A bed was also in the room, which looked out by one window upon the lawn and the river, and by the other at the farm, the corn-cribs, and the small barns and pound-yard.
With a sailor's quiet, sliding feet, Jimmy walked into the low hall, and a cat-bird, in a cage there, immediately started such a shrill series of cries that his steps were unheard by himself.
"Nobody bein' yer," thought Jimmy, "an' the flies gittin 'at the victuals, I reckon I'll do as I would be done by."
So he began to eat, and soon he heard a female voice, very close by, sound down the stairs, as if reciting to another person.
"Aunt Patty says Aunt Betty's first husband, CaptainTwiford, was a sea-captain and a widower, and she was one of the beautiful Hanley girls, brought up by old Ebenezer Johnson at his house across on Broad Creek; and there Captain Twiford courted her, and brought her here to live. He died early—all my aunties' husbands died early—and is buried in the vault out here behind the pound, where you can go in and see him in his shroud, lying by Aunt Betty. Her next husband, John Gillis, left her, and then she lived with William Russell, a negro-trader. Aunt Patty governed all her sisters and the Johnson boys, too. Oh, how I fear her when she looks at me sometimes with her bold, black eyes: I can't help it."
Another voice, not a woman's, yet almost as gentle, now seemed to ask a question; but the cat-bird, behaving like a detective and a tale-bearer, made such a furious screaming at seeing a stranger drinking the milk, that Phœbus could not hear it well. The pleasant female voice spoke again:
"Yes, he was killed in the room under this, before I was born, Aunt Patty says; and sometimes she likes to tell such dark and bloody tales, and laughs with joy to see me frightened at them. Aunt Betty got in debt, and this house and farm were sold under executions and bought by a Maryland man, who stole an opportunity when the men were away, and set his goods in the house and set Aunt Betty's goods outside upon the lawn. It's only a mile, or a little more, from here to Ebenezer Johnson's, and the news of the seizure was sent there."
Jimmy tore off a piece of chicken with his teeth, listening voraciously.
"Did you hear anything?" continued the voice; "I thought I did. The dogs are chained up in the smoke-house, and bad people are often coming here; I will go turn the dogs loose."
"Be dogged if you do!" Jimmy reflected. "That's the meanest cat-bird ever I see, fur now it's shut up a-purpose."
There sounded something familiar to the uninvited guest in the voice which seemed to delay this intention; but the cat-bird, with his unaccommodating mood, broke right in again. Then the female continued:
"While the men—who had come armed, expecting trouble—were removing Aunt Betty's goods out of the room, throwing many of them out of the windows, so as to be themselves in sole possession, a sound was heard in the room below, where your meal is now ready, like a panther skipping and lashing his tail; and, before the men could breathe, old Ebenezer Johnson was up the stairs and laying about him. His eyes were full of murder. One man jumped right through that window and rolled off the porch; another he pitched down the stairs; the third was a boy, Joe King, barely grown—he lives not far from this house now—and Ebenezer Johnson dashed him down the stairs, too, and started after him. All his life the boy had been taught to dread that terrible man, and now he was in his hands, or flying before him; and, as he reeled through the room below, out of the door that opens on the back porch, the boy's eyes, in the agony of the fear of death, beheld a rifle leaning there."
"Mighty good thing if it was thar now!" Jimmy inwardly remarked, finishing the chicken, and still hungry.
"Oh, thereisa noise somewhere in this house," the voice exclaimed; "I never tell this story but it makes me startled at every sound. The boy, as he whirled past, grasped the long rifle, drew it to his shoulder, and, with a young volunteer's skill—for he had been drilling to fight the British—he put the two balls in that old man's brain. Both balls entered over the left eyebrow, and one passed through the head and was found in the wall; the other never was found.[3]The lawless giant gave a tremblingmotion through his frame, his eyes glazed, and he sank dead upon the floor without a sound—the wicked had ceased from troubling! Aunt Betty, Aunt Patty, and Aunt Jane, three sisters shaped by him in soul, fell on his body and wept and almost prayed, but it was too late. They buried him near Aunt Betty, in the field behind the pound."
Undertaking to rise from his chair, Jimmy Phœbus made a loud scraping on the floor, and the table-knife fell with a ringing sound.
"Who's there?" cried a voice, and added, "I knew the dogs ought to be loose."
"Who's there?" also asked the other voice, with something very familiar to Phœbus in its sounds.
"E-b-e-n-e-z-e-r John-son!" answered Jimmy, in his deepest bass tones, mentally considering that a ghost might carry more terror than a robber, after that tale.
A little scream followed, and a whispered consultation, and then a girl's bare feet, beautifully moulded, slowly descended the steep stairway, and next a slender, graceful body came into view, and finally a face, delicious as a ripe peach, looked once at the intruder below, and all the pink and bright color faded from it to see, standing there, where Ebenezer Johnson had given up the ghost, a stalwart effigy, bandaged in white all round the head, and over the left eye and cheek, where the dead river-pirate had received his double bullet, the blood was hideously matted and not wholly stanched even yet. She sank slowly down upon the steps and saw no more.
"Now, if I don't git out, the dogs will be set loose," muttered Jimmy, as he disappeared up the farm-house lane and put the barn and pound between him and the house; and scarcely had he done so when Levin Dennis appeared coming down the stairs, all unconscious of the apparition, and, finding the beautiful girl insensible, he raised her in his arms and stole a kiss.
Paying for his one act of deceit by losing the principal object of his quest, Jimmy Phœbus stopped a minute by Ebenezer Johnson's grave.
In a level field of deep sand—the soil here being the poorest in the region—and between the cattle-pound and the pines, which were everywhere jealous of their other indigenous brother, the Indian corn, an old family burial-lot lay under some low cedar-trees, with wild berry bushes growing all around. There were several little stones over Twifords that had died early, and a large heap of sand, planted with some flowers, that might have covered a favorite horse, but which Phœbus believed was the resting-place of the river buccaneer; and there was also a vault of brick and plaster, with the little door ajar, where prurient visitors, themselves with Saul's own selfish curiosity to raise the dead, had poked and peeped about until the coffin lids had been drawn back and the dead pair exposed to the dry peninsular air.
The bay captain looked in and beheld his predecessor, Captain Twiford, who also sailed the bay, lying in his shroud—not in full clothing, as men are buried now, for clothing was too valuable in the scanty-peopled country to feed it to the worms. Twiford lay shrivelled up, shroud and flesh making but one skin, the face of a walnut color, the hair complete, the teeth sound, and severe dignity unrelaxed by the exposure he was condemned to for his evil alliance with Betty Hanley.
She also lay exposed, who had lived so shamelessly, respecting not the mould of beauty God had given her, till now men leered to look upon her nearly kiln-dried bosom glued into its winding-sheet, and the glory of her hair, that had been handled by bantering outlaws, and in a rippling wave of unbleached coal covered the grinning coquetry of her skull.
"Them that mocks God shall be mocked of him," said Jimmy Phœbus, closing the door and putting some of thescattered bricks of the vault against it. "Now, I reckon, I kin git to the cross-roads by a leetle after dark."
Phœbus passed along the side of a large, black, cypress-shaded mill-pond, and found the boundary stone again, and took the angle from its northern face as a compass-point, and, proceeding in that direction, soon fell in with a sort of blind path hardly feasible for wheels, which ran almost on the line between the states of Maryland and Delaware, passing in sight of several of these old boundary stones. Not a dwelling was visible as he proceeded, not even a clearing, not a stream except one mere gutter in the sand, not a man, hardly an animal or a bird; the monotonous sand-pines, too low to moan, too thick to expand, too dry to give shade, yet grew and grew, like poor folks' sandy-headed children, and kept company only with some scrubby oaks that had strayed that way, till pine-cone and acorn seemed to have bred upon each other, and the wild hogs disdained the progeny.
"Maybe I'll git killed up yer in this Pangymonum," Jimmy reflected; "an' though I 'spose it don't make no difference whair you plant your bones, I don't want to grow up into ole pines. Good, big, preachin' kind of pines, that's a little above the world, an' says 'Holy, rolley, melancho-ly, mind your soul-y'—I could go into their sap and shats fust-rate. But to die yer an' never be found in these desert wastes is pore salvage for a man that's lived among the white sails of the bay, an' loved a woman elegant as Ellenory."
It was dark, and he could hardly see his way in half an hour. Sometimes a crow would caw, to hear strangesounds go past, like an old watchman's rattle moved one cog. The stars became bright, however, and the moon was new, and when Phœbus came to a large cleared opening in the pines, the lambent heavens broke forth and bathed the sandy fields with silver, and showed a large, high house at the middle of the clearing, with outside chimneys, one thicker than the other, and a porch of two stories facing the east.
Though not a large dwelling, it was large for those days and for that unfrequented region, and its roof seemed to Phœbus remarkably steep and long, and yet, while enclosing so much space, had not a single dormer window in it. The southern gable was turned towards the intruder, and in it were two small windows at the top, crowded between the thick chimney and the roof slope. The two main stories were well lighted, however, and the porch was enclosed at the farther end, making a double outside room there. No sheds, kitchens, or stables were attached to the premises, but an old pole-well, like some catapult, reared its long pole at half an angle between the crotch of another tree. Roads, marked by tall worm fences, crossed at the level vista where this tall house presided, and a quarter of a mile beyond the cross-roads, to the northeast, was another house, much smaller, and hip-gabled, like Twiford's, standing up a lane and surrounded by small stables, cribs, orchard, and garden.
"I never 'spected to come yer," Jimmy Phœbus observed, "but I've hearn tell of this place considabul. The big barn-roofed house is Joe Johnston's tavern for the entertainment of Georgey nigger-traders that comes to git his stolen goods. It's at the cross-roads, three miles from Cannon's Ferry, whar the passengers from below crosses the Nanticoke fur Easton and the north, an' the stages from Cambridge by the King's road meets 'em yonder at the tavern. The tavern stands in Dorchester County, with a tongue of Caroline reaching down in frontof it, an' Delaware state hardly twenty yards from the porch. Thar ain't a court-house within twenty miles, nor a town in ten, except Crotcher's Ferry, whar every Sunday mornin' the people goin' to church kin pick up a basketful of ears, eyes, noses, fingers, an' hair bit off a-fightin' on Saturday afternoon. They call the country around Crotcher's, Wire Neck, caze no neck is left thar that kin be twisted off; the country in lower Car'line they calls 'Puckem,' caze the crops is so puckered up. They say Joe's a great man among his neighbors, an' kin go to the Legislater. The t'other house out in the fields is Patty Cannon's own, whar she did all her dev'lishness fur twenty years, till Joe got rich enough to build his palace."
With the rapid execution of a man who only plans with his feet and hands, the bay sailor observed that there was a grove of good high timber—oaks and pines—only a few rods from the cross-roads and to the right, under cover of which he could draw near the tavern. As he proceeded to gain its shade, he heard extraordinary sounds of turbulence from the front of the tavern, the yelling of men, the baying of hounds, oaths and laughter, and, listening as he crossed the intervening space, he fell into a ditch inadvertently, almost at the edge of the timber.
"Hallo!" cried Jimmy, lying quite still to draw his breath, since the ditch was now perfectly dry, "this ditch seems to me to pint right for that tavern."
He therefore crawled along its dry bed till it crossed under a road by a wooden culvert or little bridge of a few planks.
The noise at the tavern was now like a fight, and, as Phœbus continued to crawl forward, he heard twenty voices, crying,
"Gouge him, Owen Daw!" "Hit him agin, Cyrus James!" "Chaw him right up!" "Give' em room, boys!"
Having crawled to what he judged the nearest point of concealed approach, Phœbus lost the moment to take a single glance only, and, drawing his old slouched hat down on his face to hide the bandaging, he muttered, "Now's jess my time," and crept up to the back of the crowd, which was all facing inwards in a circle, and did not perceive him.
A fully grown man, as it seemed, was having a fight with a boy hardly fifteen years old; but the boy was the more reckless and courageous of the two, while the man, with three times the boy's strength, lacked the stomach or confidence to avail himself of it; and, having had the boy down, was now being turned by the latter, amid shouts of "Three to two on Owen Daw!" "Bite his nose off, Owen Daw!" "Five to two that Cyrus James gits gouged by Owen Daw!"
The boy with a Celtic face and supple body was full of zeal to merit favor and inflict injury, and, as the circle of vagrants and outlaws of all ages reeled and swayed to and fro, Phœbus, unobserved by anybody, put his head down among the rest and searched the faces for those of Levin Dennis or Joe Johnson.
Neither was there, and the only face which arrested his attention was a woman's, standing in the door of the enclosed space at the end of the porch, at right angles to the central door of the tavern, and just beside it. The whole building was without paint, and weather-stained, but the room on the porch was manifestly newer, as if it had been an afterthought, and its two windows revealed some of the crude appendages of a liquor bar, as a fire somewhere within flashed up and lighted it.
By this fire the woman's face was also revealed, and she was so much interested in the fight that she turned all parts of her countenance into the firelight, slapping her hands together, laughing like a man, dropping her oaths at the right places, and crying:
"I bet my money on little Owen Daw! Cy James ain't no good, by God! Yer's whiskey a-plenty for Owen Daw if he gouges him. Give it to him, Owen Daw! Shame on ye, Cy James!"
There was occasional servility and deference to this woman from members of the crowd, however they were absorbed in the fight. She was what is called a "chunky" woman, short and thick, with a rosy skin, low but pleasing forehead, coal-black hair, a rolling way of swaying and moving herself, a pair of large black eyes, at once daring, furtive, and familiar, and a large neck and large breast, uniting the bull-dog and the dam, cruelty and full womanhood.
Behind this woman, whom Phœbus thought to be Patty Cannon herself, the moonlight from the rear came through the door in the older and main building, shining quite through the house, and Phœbus saw that the rear door was also open and was unguarded.
He took the first chance, therefore, of dodging around the corner of the bar, intending to pass around the north gable of the house and dart up the stairs by the unwatched door; but he had barely got out of sight when a loud hurrah burst from the crowd as a feeble voice was heard crying "Enough, enough!" followed by jeers rapidly approaching.
The large outside chimney, where Phœbus now was, had an arched cavity in it large enough to contain a man, being the chimney of two different rooms within, whose smoke, uniting higher up, ascended through one stem. Into this cavity Phœbus dodged, in time to avoid the beaten party to the fight, the grown man, who staggered blindly by towards a well, his face dripping blood, and he was sobbing babyishly; but the concealed sailor heard him say, in a whining tone:
"She set him on me; I'll make her pay for it."
Several of the partisans or tormentors of this cravenfollowed after him, and Jimmy himself fell in at the rear, and, instead of going with the rest towards the well, where the loser was bathing his face, Phœbus softly stepped over the low sill of the back door, the woman's back being turned to him, and, as he had anticipated, a stairway ascended there out of a large room, which answered the purposes of parlor and hall, dining and gambling room, as Jimmy drank in at one glance, from seeing tables, dishes and cards, bottles and whips, arms and saddles. This stairway had no baluster, and was not safe in the dark for strangers to the house.
Satisfying himself by an interior observation, as he had suspected exteriorly, that there was no cellar under Johnson's tavern, the sailor slipped up the stairs, intent to find where Judge Custis's property and Ellenora's wayward son had been concealed. The second story had a hall, which opened only at the front of the house and upon the upper piazza, and four doors upon this hall indicated four bedrooms. One of them was ajar, and, peeping through, Phœbus saw, extended on a bed, oblivious to all the righting and din outside, Joe Johnson the negro-trader, his form revealed by a lamp and the open fire.
An impulse, immediately repressed, came on the sailor to draw his knife and stab Johnson to the heart, as probably the villain who had shot him from the cat-boat. The negro-trader wearily turned his long length in the bed, and Phœbus slipped back along the hall to the only door besides that was not closed fast, leading into the room at the rear southern corner of the house.
This door creaked loudly as it was opened, and a man of a bandit form and dress, who was lying on a pallet within, revealed by the bright moonlight streaming in at two windows, half roused himself as Jimmy crouched at the door, where a partition, as of a very large clothes-press, taking up fully half the room, rose between the intruder and the occupant.
"Who's there?" exclaimed a voice, with a slight lisp in it.
Jimmy discovered that there was a low trap or door near the floor, opening into this remarkable closet, and he slipped inside and drew his knife again. The man was heard moving about the narrow room, and he finally seemed to walk out into the hall and down the stairs.
Feeling around his closet, which was pitch dark, Phœbus found a deep indentation in it, as of a smaller closet, and the sound of crooning voices came from above.
"By smoke!" Jimmy mentally exclaimed, "this big closet is nothin' but a blind fur a stairway in the little closet to climb up to the dungeon under the big roof."
He stole out again and found the moonlight now streaming upon an empty pallet and the burly watchman gone, and streaming, too, upon a larger door in the closet opposite the indentation he had felt, this door secured by a padlock through a staple fastening an iron bar. The key was in the padlock, and Jimmy turned it back, drew off the lock and dropped the bar.
The moment he opened the door an almost insupportable smell came down a shallow hatchway within, up which leaned a rough step-ladder, movable, and of stout construction.
"That smell," said Phœbus, entering, and pulling the door close behind him, "might be wool, or camel, or a moral menagerie from the royal gardings of Europe, but I guess it's Nigger."
He went up the steep steps with some difficulty, as they were made to pass only one person, and at the top he entered a large garret, divided into two by a heavy partition of yellow pine, with a door at the middle of it, and from beyond this partition came the sounds of crooning and babbling he had heard.
The bright night, shining through a small gable window, revealed this outer half of the garret empty, and notfurniture or other appurtenance than the hole in the floor up which he had come, and the door into the place of wailing beyond, which was fastened by a long iron spike dropping into a staple that overshot a heavy wooden bar. As he slipped up the spike and took the bar off, Phœbus heard some person in the room below mutter, and lock the great padlock upon the other door, effectually barring his escape by that egress.
"We must take things as they come," thought Jimmy, grimly, "partickler in Pangymonum, whar I am now."
He also reflected that the arrangements of this kidnappers' pen, simple as they seemed, were quite sufficient. If authority should demand to search the house, the double clothes-press below, with the ladder pulled up into the loft, became a harmless closet hung with wardrobe matters, and the inner closet a storeroom for articles of bulk; and no human being could either go up or come down without passing two inhabited floors and three different doors, besides the door to the slave-pen.
This last door Phœbus now threw open and walked into the pen itself, stooping his head to avoid the low entrance.
For some minutes he could not see the contents at all in the total darkness that prevailed, as there was no window whatever in this pen or den, but he heard various voices, and inhaled the strong, close air of many African breaths exhausting the supply of oxygen, and knew that chains and irons were being moved against the boards of the floor.
"Thair ain't nothin' to do yer," Jimmy remarked, softly, "but jess squat down an' git a-climated, as they say about strangers to our bilious shore, an' git your eyeballs tuned to the dark. But I should say that this was both hokey-pokey an' Pangymonum, by smoke!"
A man in some part of the den was praying in a highly nervous, excited way, slobbering out his agonizing sentences, and dwelling hard upon his more open vowels, and keeping several other inmates in sympathy or equal misery, as they piped in answer to his apostrophes:
"Lawd, de-scen'! De-scen', O my Lawd. I will not let dee go; no, oh my Lawd! Come, save me! Yes, my Lawd! Come walkin' on de waters! Come outen Lazarus's tomb! Come on de chario'f fire! Come in de power! De-scen' now, O my Lawd!"
Phœbus's entrance made no excitement, and he crouched down to await the strengthening of his eyes to see around him. The place appeared to be nearly twenty-five feet square, and was cross-boarded both the gable way and under the sloping roof, whose eaves were planked up a foot or two above the floor; in the middle any man could stand upright and scarcely touch the ridge beam with his hands, but along the sloping sides could barely sit upright.
The man still continuing to express his absolute subjection of spirit in a frenzy of words, and several little children crying and shouting responsively, Phœbus ordered the man to cease, after asking him kindly to do so several times; and the command being disobeyed, he slapped the praying one with his open hand, and the poor wretch rolled over in a kind of feeble fit.
A little child somewhere continuing to cry, Phœbus took it in his arms and held between it and the starlight, at the half-open door, one of the shillings he had obtained from the old cabin on Broad Creek a few hours before. The child, seeing something shine, seized it and held fast, and Phœbus next passed his hand over the face of a sleeping man, who was snoring calmly and strenuously on the floor beside him. He made room for the faint light to shine upon the sleeper's black face, and exclaimed, in a moment:
"If it ain't Samson Hat I hope I may be swallered by a whale!"
Calling his name, "Samson! Samson!" Phœbus observed a most dejected mulatto person, who had been lying back in the shadows, crawl forward, rattling his manacles. This man, when spoken to, replied with such refinement and accuracy, however his face betokened great inward misery, that the sailor took as careful a survey of him as the moonlight permitted, coming in by that one lean attic window. He was a man who had shaved himself only recently, and his dark, curling side-whiskers and clean lips, and the tuft of goatee in the hollow of his chin, and intelligent, high forehead, seemed altogether out of place in this darksome eyrie of the sad and friendless.
"Is he your friend, sir?" asked this man, turning towards Samson. "He must have a good conscience if he is, for he slept soon after he was brought here, and has never uttered a single complaint."
"And you have, I reckon?" said the waterman.
"Oh, yes, sir; I have been treated with such ingratitude. It would break any gentleman's heart to hear my tale. Who is your friend, sir?"
"Samson, wake up, old bruiser!" cried Phœbus, shaking the sleeper soundly; "you didn't give in to one or two, by smoke!"
"Is it you, Jimmy?" the old negro finally said, with a sheepish expression; "why, neighbor, I'm glad to see you, but I'm sorry, too. A black man dey don't want to kill yer, caze dey kin sell him, but a white man like you dey don't want to keep, and dey dassn't let him go."
"Awhiteman here?" exclaimed the superior-looking person; "what can they mean?"
"I'm ironed so heavy, Jimmy," continued Samson, "dat I can't set up much. My han's is tied togedder wid cord, my feet's in an iron clevis, and a ball's chained to de clevis."
"Give me your hands," exclaimed Jimmy; "I'll settle them cords, by smoke!"
In a minute he had severed the cords at the wrist, and the intelligent yellow man pleaded that a similar favor be done for him, to which the sailor acceded ungrudgingly.
"Jimmy," said Samson, "if it's ever known in Prencess Anne—as I 'spect it never will be, fur we're in bad hands, neighbor—dar'll be a laugh instid of a cry, fur ole boxin' Samson, dat was kidnapped an' fetched to jail by a woman!"
"You licked by a woman, Samson?"
"Yes, Jimmy, a woman all by herseff frowed me down, tied my hands an' feet, an' brought me to dis garret. I hain't seen nobody but her an' dese yer people, sence I was tuk."
"Ha!" exclaimed the dejected mulatto, "that's a favorite feat of Patty Cannon. She is the only woman ever seen at a threshing-floor who can stand in a half-bushel measure and lift five bushels of grain at once upon her shoulders, weighing three hundred pounds."
"I ain't half dat," Samson smiled, quietly, "an' she handled me, shore enough. You remember, Jimmy, when I leff you by ole Spring Hill church, to go an' git a woman on a little wagon to show me de way to Laurel?"
"Why, it was only yisterday, Samson!"
"Dat was de woman, Jimmy. She was a chunky, heavy-sot woman, right purty to look at, an' maybe fifty year ole. She was de nicest woman mos' ever I see. She made me git off my mule an' ride in de wagon by her, an' take a drink of her own applejack—she said she 'stilled it on her farm. She said she knowed Judge Custis, an' asked me questions about Prencess Anne, an' wanted me to work fur her some way. We was goin froo a pore, pine country, a heap wuss dan Hardship, whar Marster Milburn come outen, an' hadn't seen nobody on de road till we come to a run she said was named de Tussocky branch, whar she got out of de wagon to water her hoss. At dat place she come up to me an' says,'Samson, I'll wrastle you!' 'Go long,' says I, 'I kin't wrastle no woman like you.' 'You got to,' she says, swearin' like a man, an' takin' holt of me jess like a man wrastles. I felt ashamed, an' didn't know what to do, and, befo' I could wink, Jimmy, dat woman had give me de trip an' shoved me wid a blow like de kick of an ox, and was a-top of my back wid a knee like iron pinnin' of me down."
"The awful huzzy of Pangymonum!"
"De fust idee I had was dat she was a man dressed up like a woman. I started like lightnin' to jump up, an' my legs caught each oder; she had carried de cord to tie me under her gown, an' clued it aroun' me in a minute. As I run at her an' fell hard, she drew de runnin' knot tight an' danced aroun' me like a fat witch, windin' me all up in de rope. De sweat started from my head, I yelled an' fought an' fell agin, an', as I laid with my tongue out like a calf in de butcher's cart, she whispered to me, 'Maybe you're de las' nigger ole Patty Cannon'll ever tie!'
"At dat name I jess prayed to de Lord, but it was too late. She put me in de cart an' gagged me so I couldn't say a word, and blood came outen my mouth. I heard her talkin' to people as we passed by a town an' over a bridge. Nobody looked in de cart whar I laid kivered over, till we come to a ferry in de night, an' dar we passed over, and I heard her talkin' to a man on dis side of de ferry. He come to de side of de wagon an' peeped at me, layin' helpless dar, my eyes jess a-prayin' to him—and he had an elegant eye in his head, Jimmy. He says softly to hisself, 'Dis is no consignment, manifes'ly, to Isaac an' Jacob Cannon,' an' he kivered me up again, an' the woman fetched me yer, put on de irons, and shoved me into dis hole in de garret."
"I reckon that was Isaac Cannon, t'other Levite that never sees anything that ain't in his quoshint."
"How's the purty gals, Jimmy? I shall see' em in my dreams, I' spect, if Iamsold Souf. I ain't got long to stay, nohow, Jimmy, fur I'm mos' sixty. If you ever git out, tell my marster to buy dat gal Virgie, an' make her free. She ain't fit to be a slave."
"Gals has their place," said Phœbus, "but not whair men has to fight for liberty. How many fighting men are we here?"
"I 'spect you's de only one, Jimmy; we's all chained up; dese nigger-dealers is all blacksmifs an' keeps balls, hobbles, gripes, an' clevises, an' loads us wid iron."
"Who is that woman back yonder so quare an' still?"
"Why, Jimmy, don't you know Aunt Hominy, Jedge Custis's ole cook? Dey brought her in dis mornin' wi' two little children outen Teackle Hall kitchen; one of dem you give dat silver to—little Ned. Hominy ain't said a word sence she come."
Jimmy Phœbus went back to the corner of the den where the old woman cowered, and called her name in many different accents and with kind assurances:
"Hominy, ole woman, don't you know Ellenory's Jimmy? Jedge Custis is comin' for you, aunty. I'm yer to take you home."
She did not speak at all, and Phœbus lifted her without resistance nearer to the moonlight. Her lips mumbled unintelligibly, her eyes were dull, she did not seem to know them.
Samson crawled forward, and also called her name kindly:
"Aunt Hominy, Miss Vesty's sent fur you. Dis yer is Jimmy Phœbus."
The little boy Ned now spoke up:
"Aunt Hominy ain't spoke sence dat Quaker man killed little Phillis."
"Jimmy," solemnly whispered Samson, "Aunt Hominy's lost her mind."
"Yes," spoke up the dejected and elegant mulatto prisoner, "she's become an idiot. They sometimes take it that way."
Phœbus bent his face close down to the poor old creature's, sitting there in her checkered turban and silver earrings, clean and tidy as servants of the olden time, and he studied her vacant countenance, her tenantless eyes, her lips moving without connection or relevance, and felt that cruelty had inflicted its last miraculous injury—whipped out her mind from its venerable residence, and left her body yet to suffer the pains of life without the understanding of them.
"Oh, shame! shame!" cried the sailor, tears finally falling from his eyes, "to deceive and steal this pore, believin' intelleck! To rob the cook of the little tin cup full o' brains she uses to git food fur bad an' fur good folks! Why, the devils in Pangymonum wouldn't treat that a way the kind heart that briled fur 'em."
"De long man said he was Quaker man," exclaimed Vince, the larger boy, "an' he come to take Hominy to de free country. Hominy was sold, she said, an' must go. De long man had a boat—Mars Dennis's boat—an' in de night little Phillis woke up an' cried. Nobody couldn't stop her. De long man picked little Phillis up by de leg an' mashed her skull in agin de flo'. Aunt Hominy ain't never spoke no mo'."
"Did you hear the long man speak after that, Vince?"
"Yes, mars'r. I heerd de long man tell Mars Dennis dat if he didn't steer de boat an' shet his mouf, he'd shoot him. I heerd de pistol go off, but Mars Dennis wasn't killed, fur I saw him steerin' afterwards."
"Thank God!" spoke the sailor, kissing the child. "Ellenory's boy was innocent, by smoke! That nigger-trader shot me an' threatened Levin's life if he listened to me hailing of him. The noise I heard was the murder of the baby, whose cries betrayed the coming of the vessel. Samson, thar's been treachery ever sence we left Salisbury, an' that nigger Dave's a part of it."
"He said he hated me caze I larned him to box. Maybe my fightin's been my punishment, Jimmy, but I never struck a man a foul blow."
"And what wasyourhokey-pokey?" the pungy captain cried to the man who had been making so much religious din. "Did they sell you fur never knowin' whar to stop a good thing?"
The man hoarsely explained, himself interested by the disclosures and fraternity around him:
"I was slave to a local preacher in Delaware, an' de sexton of de church. It was ole Barrett's chapel, up yer between Dover an' Murderkill—de church whar Bishop Coke an' Francis Asbury fust met on de pulpit stairs. My marster an' me was boff members of it, but he loved money bad, an' I was to be free when I got to be twenty-five years ole, accordin' to de will of his Quaker fader, dat left me to him. Las' Sunday night dey had a long class-meetin' dar, an' when nobody was leff in de church but my marster an' me, he says to me, 'Rodney, le's you an' me have one more prayer togedder befo' you put out dat las' lamp. You pray, Rodney!' I knelt an' prayed for marster after I must leave him to be free next year, an', while I was prayin' loud, people crept in de church an' tied me, and marster was gone."
"He sold you fur life to them kidnappers, boy, becaze you was goin' to be free next year. Don't your Bible tell you to watchan'pray?"
"Yes, marster."
"Well, then, boys, it's all watch to-night and no more praying," cried Jimmy Phœbus, cheerily. "Here are four men, loving liberty, bound to have it or die. Thar's one of' em with a knife, an' the first kidnapper that crosses that sill, man or woman—fur we'll trust no more women, Samson—gits the knife to the hilt! The blessed lightthat shone onto Calvary an' Bunker Hill is a gleamin' on the blade. Work off your irons, if you kin; I'll git you rafters outen this roof to jab with if you can't do no better. Are you all with me?"
"I am, Jimmy," answered Samson, quietly.
"I'll die with ye, too," exclaimed the praying man, with rekindled spirit.
"We will all be murdered, gentlemen," protested the dejected mulatto. "I know these desperate people."
"Then you crawl over in the corner," Phœbus commanded, "and see three men fight fur you. We don't want any fine buck nigger to spile his beauty for us."
The man crawled back into the blackness of the den again, and Phœbus began to search the open half of the garret for implements of war. He found two long pieces of chain, with which determined men might beat out an adversary's brains.
"Now, boys," Jimmy delivered himself, "I hain't lost my head yisterday nor to-day neither, by smoke! I'm goin' to kill the first person that comes yer, an' git the keys of this den from him, an' lock all of you in fast, an' the dead kidnapper, too. Then they won't git at you to ship you off till I kin git to Seaford, over yer in Delaware—it's not more than six mile—whar I know three captains of pungies, and all of' em's in port thar now—all friends of Jimmy Phœbus, all well armed, and their crews enough to handle Pangymonum!"
A noise was heard at the lock of the lower door, and Phœbus slipped into the enclosed den and took his station just within the door.
"Remember," he whispered, "I open the fight."
The lock snapped at the door below the step-ladder, the bolt fell, and the light of a lamp flashed up the hatchway and upon the naked roof, and through the cracks of the boarded garret pen.
The sailor's knife was in his belt-pouch, where he carried it over the hip. As he leaned down to look through a crack in the low door, he felt a hand from the gloom behind touch him.
Instinctively he felt for his knife, and it was gone.
"Captain," cried the voice of the dejected mulatto, as the door of the pen flew open and the bandit-looking stranger appeared with the lamp, "there's a white man here going to kill you. I've taken his knife from him and saved your life. It's a rebellion, captain!"
"Help! Patty! Joe!" cried the man, with a loud voice, as Jimmy Phœbus threw himself upon him and extinguished the lamp, and the two powerful men rolled on the floor together in a grip of mortal combat.
Phœbus was a man of great power, but his antagonist was strong and slippery, too, and a spirited rough-and-tumble fighter.
The pungy captain was on top, the bandit man locked him fast in his arms and legs, and tried to stab him in the side, as Phœbus felt the handle of a clasp-knife, which seemed slow to obey its spring, strike him repeatedly all round the groin, in strokes that would have killed, inflicted by the blade.
Phœbus attempted to drag the man to the hatchway and force him down it, while the two negro assistants of Phœbus beat down the negro traitor with their chains, and searched him vainly for the knife he had filched.
At last Phœbus prevailed, and his antagonist rolled down the open hatchway, seven feet or more, still keeping his desperate hold on Phœbus, and dragging him along; and both might have cracked their skulls but for a woman just in the act of hurrying up the ladder, against whom their two bodies pitched and were cushioned upon her.
The shock, however, stunned both of them, and when Phœbus recollected himself he was tied hand and footand lying on the garret floor again, and over him stood Joe Johnson, flourishing a cowhide.
The bandages had again been torn from Phœbus's face, and he was bleeding at the flesh-wound in his cheek, and breathless from his conflict. A woman had dashed a vessel of water into his face, and this had revived him.
The other man, called "captain," had, meantime, by the aid of this woman—the same Phœbus had seen down-stairs—subdued and tied the black insurgents, and both of them were flourishing their whips over the backs and heads of the prisoners, big and little, so that the garret was no slight reflection of the place of eternal torment, as the shadows of the monsters, under the weak light, whipped and danced against the beams and shingles, and shrieks and shouts of "Mercy!" blended in hideous dissonance.
The woman now turned her lamp on the sailor's rough, swarthy, injured countenance, and looked him over out of her dark, bold eyes:
"Joe, this is a nigger, by God!"
Johnson and the captain also examined him carefully, and, uttering an oath, the former kicked the prostrate man with his heavy boot.
"I popped this bloke last night," he said, "and thought the scold's cure had him. He's a sea-crab playin' the setter fur niggers. He sang beef to me in Princess Anne. I told him thar he'd pass for a nigger, Patty, and we'll sell him fur one to Georgey!"
"All's fish that comes to our net, Joe," the woman chuckled; "he'll sell high, too."
"That white man," spoke the voice of Samson, within the pen, his chains rattling, "has hunderds of friends a-lookin' fur him, an' you'll ketch it if you don't let him off."
"What latitat chants there?" Joe Johnson demanded of Patty Cannon.
"That's my nigger, Joe," the woman answered.
"Fetch him to the light."
The captain propped Samson up, and Joe Johnson glared into his face, and then struck him down with the handle of his heavy whip.
"Patty," he growled, "that nigger's scienced; he's the champion scrapper of Somerset. He knocked me down, and I marked him fur it; and now, by God! I'm a-goin' to burn him alive on Twiford's island."
He swore an oath, half blasphemous, half blackguard, and the captain murmured, with a lisp:
"The white man is the onlywitness. Make sure of him!"
Irons were produced, and the captain speedily fastened Phœbus's hands in a clevis, and hobbled his feet, and placed him, without brutality, in the pen, and, further, chained him there to a ring in the joist below. As the door was closed and bolted, a voice from the darkness of the pen cried out:
"Aunt Patty, let me out: I saved the captain's life; I took the white man's knife. I'll serve you faithfully if you only let me go."
"He blowed the gab," said Joe Johnson, "but it won't serve him."
"Zeke," cried the woman, "it's no use. You go to Georgey with the next gang—you an' the white nigger thar."
The man threw himself upon the floor and moaned and prayed, as the lamplight disappeared and the hatchway slid echoingly over the stairs, and the lower bolts were drawn. As he lay there in horror and amid contempt, a voice arrested his ears near by, singing, with musical and easy spirit, so low that it seemed a hymn, from the roads and fields far down beneath:
"Deep-en de woun' dy hands have madeIn dis weak, helpless soul."
The man listened with awe and silence, as if a spirit hummed the tune, and forgot his doom of slavery a moment in the deeper anguish of a treacherous heart that simple hymn bestirred. It was only Jimmy Phœbus, thinking what he could say to punish this double traitor most, who had turned his back upon his race and upon gratitude, and Jimmy had remembered the poor woman chained to the tree on Twiford's island, and her oft-reiterated hymn; and the conclusion was flashed upon his mind that the mulatto wretch who decoyed her away and sold her was none other than his renegade fellow-prisoner, in turn made merchandise of because too dangerous to set at large in the probable hue-and-cry for her.
"Poor Mary!" Phœbus slowly spoke, in his deepest tones, with solemn cadence.
The wretched man listened and trembled.
"Mary's sperrit's callin' 'Zeke!'" Phœbus continued, awful in his inflection.
The miserable procurer's heart stopped at the words, and his eyeballs turned in torment.
"Come, Zeke! poor Mary's a-waitin' for ye!" cried the sailor, suddenly, in a voice of thunder, and as suddenly relapsed into the low singing of the quiet hymn again:
"Deep-en de woun' dy hands 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."
The elegant Iscariot, at the thunder of the invocation, had reached into a place between two of the cypress shingles in the roof, where he had hidden the sailor's knife, the blade being pressed out of sight, and only the handle within his grasp. It had been overlooked in the exciting scenes of the previous few minutes, and now recurred to his mind, as superstitious passions rolled like dreadful meteors across the black and hopeless chasm of his despairing soul.
When the low drone of the hymn he had heard his victim sing to her baby, when her faith in him was pure and childlike, crossed his maddened ears again, he raised one shriek of "Mercy!" to which no answer fell, and drew the blade across his throat and fell dead in the kidnappers' den.