AFRICA.
The Captain took his place at the reins, his picturesque velvet jacket,
wide hat, bright hair, and gay shirt, thighings, belt, and boots,
deserving all Patty Cannon's encomiums as he made a polite adieu and
threw his whip like a thunderbolt, and a cheer rose from the discarded
volunteers loitering about the tavern as he drove Joe Johnson and Levin
away.
The road was nearly dead level for five miles, but, being the old
travelled road from Laurel and the south to Easton, and pointing towards
Baltimore, numerous farms and clearings were seen, and tobacco-fields
alternated with the dry corn and new-ploughed wheat patches. Here and
there, like a measure of gold poured upon the ground, the yellow ears
lay in the gaunt corn-rows, to become the ground meal of the slave and
the cattle's winter substance. Joe Johnson's popularity was everywhere
apparent, and many a shout was given of, "Good luck to ye, Joe!" "Tote
us a nigger back from Delaway, Joe!" "Don't be too hard on them ar black
Blue Hen's chickens, Joe!"
Van Dorn was too far above the comprehension of his neighbors, or,
indeed, of anybody, to be familiarly addressed, but "Patty Cannon's man"
was the term of injured inferiority towards him after he had passed.
At Federalsburg they crossed the branch of the Nanticoke piercing to the
centre of Delaware state, and saw one large brick house of colonial
appearance dominating the little wooden hamlet, and here, as generally
within the Maryland line, hunting negroes was the "lark" or the serious
occupation of many an idle or enterprising fellow, who trained his negro
scouts like a setter, or more often like a spaniel, and crossed the line
on appointed nights as ardently and warily as the white trader in Africa
takes to the trails of the interior for human prey.
"Joe," said Van Dorn, "what is to be your disposition of the prisoners
we have?"
"All goes with me to Norfolk but one,--the nigger boxer; I burn him
alive on Twiford's island. If the white chap is too pickle to sell, I'll
throw him overboard; he ain't safe."
"_Ea! sus!_ it is boyish to burn the old lad. I have had many a blow
from a black, and stab, too. A dog will bite you if you lasso him."
"No nigger can knock me down and git off with selling."
"Then you are a bad trader. The negro's price is all the negro is; why
make him your equal by hating him?"
"I am a Delaware boy," Joe Johnson said, "and it's the pride with me to
give no nigger a chance. In Maryland you pets 'em, like ole Colonel Ned
Lloyd over yer on the Wye; he's give his nigger coachman a gole watch
an' chain because he's his son! What a nimenog! Some day he'll raise a
nigger that'll be makin' politikle speeches, an' then I don't want to
live no more."[5]
"_Chito!_ Since the Delaware lawyer sent you to the post, son-in-law,
you're morose. I have had to eat with negro princes, dance with their
queens, and be ceremonious as if they had been angels."
"It would be the reign of Queen Dick for me! I couldn't do it, nohow."
"And, by the way, Joseph, I may see your friend, the lawyer Clayton, at
Dover, to-night: he may send me to the post, too; and I fear no Delaware
governor will take off the cropping of my ears, as was done for you in
state patriotism."
"Beware of that imp of Tolobon!" Joe Johnson muttered. "How I wish you
could kill him, Van Dorn. He's got to be a senator; some day he'll be
chief-justice of Delaware: then, what'll niggers be wuth thar?"
"I fancy, Joseph, you might be a legislator in Delaware if your
inclinations ran that way?"
"Easy enough, but I makes legislators. My wife, Margaretta--her first
husband's sister is the wife of the chancellor."
"Hola! oh! How came that great alliance?"
"She was housekeeper; he was a close old bachelor and must break a leg.
'Well,' she says, 'you're a daddy; justice is your trade, and I must
have it.' So, from bein' his peculiar, she becomes the madam; but she
inwented the kid."
"I have never been in Dover; how shall I tell where Lawyer Clayton
dwells?"
"It's on the green a-middle of the town, a-standin' by the
state-house--a long, roughcast house in the corner, three stories high,
with two doors; the door next the state-house is his office. Go past the
state-house, which has a cupelo onto it, an' you see the jug an'
whippin'-post. He's got 'em handy fur you."
Levin listened with all his ears. The liquor was now well out of his
system, and he thanked God he had refused Patty Cannon's burning dram,
else he might be this night--he thought it with remorse--the reckless
mate for Owen Daw, whose own mother had predicted the gallows for him.
"And now, Van Dorn, I turn back," Joe Johnson said; "I have a job to do
down the Peninsuly. McLane has become the owner of a gal thar, an' wants
her sneaked. I takes black Dave with me, an' when I'm back, my boat will
be ready an' my cargo packed. Then hey fur Floridey!"
He unhaltered his horse at the tail of the wagon, mounted him, and rode
back across the stream. Van Dorn touched his horses and entered the
dense woods in a byway to the north.
"Get up here, Master Levin, and ride by me," the Captain said, very
soon, and he lifted Levin's old hat from his head and looked at his
bright hair parted in the middle, his fine, large eyes, needing the
light of knowledge, and his soft complexion and marks of good
extraction.
"Where is thy father, Levin, to let thee go so ragged, with such
graceful limbs and feet as these?"
"Shipwrecked," said Levin; "gone down, I 'spect, on the privateer."
"A sailor, was he? Well, he should be home to clothe thee and see that
thou dost not cheat. I marked how Madam Cannon's punch was tossed out of
the window."
"I thought you would not want me drunk beside you all night, sir, and
then I might enjoy your company. I don't want to drink no more liquor."
"You like my company?"
"Yes, sir."
The Captain blushed, and asked,
"Why do you like me?"
"Not fur nothin' you do, sir. I like you fur somethin' in your ways; I
reckon you're a smart man."
"_Si, senor_, that I am. I have gained the whole world and lost two."
"Two worlds, sir?"
"Yes, two immortal worlds; that is to say, two unaccountable worlds. I
am no Christian."
"Maybe you're Chinee or Mahometan, then, sir; I 'spect everybody's got a
religion."
"I was a Mahometan for business ends," Van Dorn said. "Having become a
slaver, it was nothing to be a renegade. Stealing a man's soul every
day, I put no value on mine. Yes, Mahomet is the prophet of God: so are
you."
"You have been in Afrikey, I 'spect," suggested Levin.
"A few years only, but long enough to be rich and to be ruined. I know
the negro coast from the Gambia to Cape Palmas, and inland to Timbo. I
have had an African queen and the African fever: I went to conquer
Africa and became a slave."
"In Africa, I 'spect, Captain," Levin remarked, without inference, "a
nigger-trader is respectable."
Van Dorn shook his head.
"I doubt if that trade is respectable anywhere on this globe, unless it
be _here_. No, I will say for these people, too, that while they do it
low lip homage, they look down on it. I was once the greatest guest in
Timbo, housed with its absolute prince, attended by my suite, looking
like an ambassador, and he called me 'his son' and drew me to his
breast. Proclamations were made that I should be respected as such, yet
every human object fled before me. As I rode out alone to see the
gardens and cassava fields, the roaming goats and oxen, and the rich
mountain prospects, and saw the sloe-eyed girls bathing in the brooks,
the cry went round, 'Flesh-buyer is coming,' and huts were deserted,
fields forsaken, the gray patriarchs and the little children ran, and I
was left alone with the dumb animals, despised, abhorred."
"Don't they have slavery thair, sir?"
"Yes, slavery immemorial, yet the slave-buyer is no more respectable
than the procurer. The coin of Africa, its only medium, was the slave.
He paid the debt of war, of luxury, and of business. Yet the soul of
man, in the familiar study of such universal slavery, grovels with it,
and points to bright destiny no more with the head erect: I died in
Africa."
"Ain't you in the business now, sir?"
"Now I am a mere forest thief and bushman, Levin. He who begins a base
trade rises early to its fulness, and in subsequent life must be a poor
wolf rejected from the pack, stealing where he can sneak in. Such is the
kidnapper eking out the decayed days of the slaver; such is the ruined
voluptuary, living at last on the earnings of some shameless woman; such
am I: behold me!"
Van Dorn's eyes turned on Levin in their cold, heartless light, and yet
he blushed, as usual.
"You ought to be a gentleman, Captain. What made you break the laws so
and be a bad man?"
"_Ayme! ayme_!" mused Van Dorn, "shall I tell you? It was Africa. I was
a high-minded youth, cool and bold, and with a thread of pleasure in me.
I went to sea in a manly trade, and, fortune being slow, they whispered
to me, in the West Indies, that my clipper was just the thing for the
slave-trade, and I made the first venture out of virtue, which is all
the voyage. In Africa I fell a prey to the voluptuous life a white man
leads there, to which the very missionaries are not always exceptions.
Young, pale, gentle, graceful, brave, my blushes instant as my passions,
the ceaseless intrigue of that hot climate circled around me like a
dance in the harem around the young intruder: I forgot my native land
and every obligation in it; I was enslaved by Africa to its swooning
joys; I went there like the serpent and was stung by the woman."
"Ain't they all right black and ugly in Africa, Captain?"
"The world has not the equals of Senegambia for beauty," said Van Dorn.
"The Fullah beauties are often almost white, and the black admixture is
no more than varnish on the maple-tree. And even here, my lad, where
civilization builds a wall of social fire around the slave, you often
mark the idolatry of the white head to captive Africa."
"Did you make money?"
"For some years I did, plenty of it; but degradation in the midst of
pleasure weighed down my spirits. The thing called honor had flown from
over me like the heavenly dove, and in its place a hundred painted birds
flocked joyfully, the dazzling creatures of that thoughtless world. Oh,
that I could have been born there or never have seen it! At last I
started home, but the world had adopted a new commandment, 'Thou shalt
not trade in man.' They took my ship and all its black cargo, and I came
home naked. Then my heart was broke, and I turned kidnapper."
"Home is the best place," said Levin; "I 'spect it is, even if folks is
pore. When Jimmy Phoebus give me a boat I thought I was rich as a
Jew."
"What is that name?" asked Van Dorn.
"James Phoebus: he's mother's sweetheart."
"_Ce ce ce!_" the Captain mused; "your mother lives, then?"
"Yes, sir. She's pore, but Jimmy loves her, and the ghost of father
feeds her."
"_Quedo!_ a ghost? what kind of thing is that? Aunt Patty sees them: I
never do."
"It comes an' puts sugar an' coffee in the window, an' sometimes a pair
of shoes an' a dress. Mother says it's father: I guess it is."
"_O Dios!_" lisped Van Dorn. "This Phoebus, is he a good man?"
"Brave as a lion, sir; pore as any pungy captain; the best friend I ever
had. I hoped mother would marry him, he's been a-waitin' fur her so
long. She's afraid father ain't dead."
"_O hala, hala!_ women are such waiters; but this man can wait too. Is
he strong?"
"He come mighty nigh givin' Joe Johnson a lickin' last Sunday, sir, in
Princess Anne. He hates a nigger-trader. Him an' Samson Hat, a black
feller, thinks as much of each other as two brothers."
"And he gave you a boat?"
"Yes, sir: Joe Johnson hired it of me, but I didn't know he was goin' to
run away niggers. He's got my boat an' ruined my credit, I 'spect, in
Princess Anne, an' what will mother do when I go to jail?"
"Why, this other man, Phoebus, is there to marry her or look after
her."
"Oh, Captain," sobbed Levin, putting his hands on Van Dorn's knees, and
laying his orphan head there too, "pore Jimmy's dead: Joe Johnson shot
him."
The Captain did not move or speak.
"I've been a drunkard, Captain," Levin sobbed again, in the confidence
of a child; "that's whair all our misery comes from. I've got nothin'
but my boat, an' people hires it to go gunnin' an' fishin' and
spreein', and they takes liquor with 'em, an' I drinks. God help me; I
never will agin, but die first!"
"Are you not afraid to lean on me?" lisped Van Dorn.
"No, sir."
"I have killed people, too."
"The Lord forgive you, sir; I know you won't kill _me_."
A sigh broke from the bandit's lips, in place of his usual soft lisp,
and was followed by a warm drop of water, as from the forest leaves now
bathed in night, that plashed on Levin's neck.
"O God," a soft voice said, "may I not die?"
Then Levin felt the same warm drops fall many times upon him, and his
nature opened like the plants to rain.
"I have found a friend, Captain," the boy spoke, after several minutes,
but not looking up; "I feel you cry."
"_Chito! chito!_" lisped Van Dorn; "here is Punch Hall."
Levin raised his head, and saw nothing but an old house standing in the
trees, with a little faint light streaming from the door, and heard the
low hilarity of drinking men. The whole band poured out to receive Van
Dorn's commands.
"One hour here to feed and rest!" Van Dorn exclaimed. "Let those sleep
who can. Let any straggle or riot who dare!"