PATTY CANNON'S.
Phoebus 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 strange sounds go past, like an old
watchman's rattle moved one cog. The stars became bright, however, and
the moon was new, and when Phoebus 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 Phoebus 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 Phoebus 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 front of 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 Phoebus
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, Phoebus 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, Phoebus, 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 Phoebus 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 Phoebus 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 Phoebus 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 Phoebus 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 craven followed 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,
Phoebus 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, Phoebus 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 Phoebus 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, Phoebus 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 Phoebus, 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 not furniture 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, Phoebus 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 Phoebus 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!"
Phoebus'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, Phoebus 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, Phoebus 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 Phoebus 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!" Phoebus 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 Phoebus, 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."
"A _white_ man 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
I _am_ sold 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 Phoebus, "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 Phoebus 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 Phoebus 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 Phoebus."
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."
Phoebus 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 was _your_ hokey-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 watch _an'_ pray?"
"Yes, marster."
"Well, then, boys, it's all watch to-night and no more praying," cried
Jimmy Phoebus, 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 light that 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," Phoebus 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 Phoebus
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 Phoebus, all well armed, and
their crews enough to handle Pangymonum!"
A noise was heard at the lock of the lower door, and Phoebus 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 Phoebus
threw himself upon him and extinguished the lamp, and the two powerful
men rolled on the floor together in a grip of mortal combat.
Phoebus 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 Phoebus 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.
Phoebus attempted to drag the man to the hatchway and force him down
it, while the two negro assistants of Phoebus beat down the negro
traitor with their chains, and searched him vainly for the knife he had
filched.
At last Phoebus prevailed, and his antagonist rolled down the open
hatchway, seven feet or more, still keeping his desperate hold on
Phoebus, 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 Phoebus recollected
himself he was tied hand and foot and lying on the garret floor again,
and over him stood Joe Johnson, flourishing a cowhide.
The bandages had again been torn from Phoebus'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 Phoebus 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 only _witness_. Make sure of him!"
Irons were produced, and the captain speedily fastened Phoebus'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 made
In 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
Phoebus, 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!" Phoebus slowly spoke, in his deepest tones, with solemn
cadence.
The wretched man listened and trembled.
"Mary's sperrit's callin' 'Zeke!'" Phoebus 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 made
In dis weak, helpless soul,
Till mercy, wid its mighty aid
De-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.