"To the pump with him! And see that he has a double dose of it!"
The words were spoken in a tone of command, earnest and angry. They
were addressed to the overseer of a cotton-plantation not far from
Vicksburg, in the State of Mississippi, the speaker being Blount
Blackadder, a youth aged eighteen, and son to Squire Blackadder, the
owner of the plantation.
Who was to receive the double douche?
Near by stood a personage to whom the words evidently pointed. He was
also a youth, not very different either in age or size from him who had
given the order; though his tawny skin and short crisped hair bespoke
him of a different race--in short, a mulatto. And the time--for it is a
tale of twenty years ago--along with other attendant circumstances,
proclaimed him a slave of the plantation.
And why ordered to be thus served? As a punishment, of course.
You may smile at the idea, and deem it a joke. But the "punishment of
the pump" is one of the most severe that can be inflicted; far more so
than either the bastinado, or castigation by the lash. A man may writhe
while his back is being scored by the cowskin; but that continuous
stream of cold water, at first only refreshing, becomes after a time
almost unendurable, and the victim feels as though his skull were being
split open with an axe.
What had "Blue Dick"--the plantation sobriquet of the young mulatto--
what had he done to deserve such chastisement?
The overseer, hesitating to inflict it, put this question to Blount
Blackadder.
"That's my business, and not yours, Mr Snively. Enough when I say he
has deserved; and darn me if he don't have it. To the pump with him!"
"Your father won't be pleased about it," pursued the overseer. "When he
comes home--"
"When he comes home; that's my affair. He's not at home now, and during
his absence I'm master of this plantation, I guess. I hope, sir, you'll
recognise me as such."
"Oh, sartinly," grumbled the overseer.
"Well, then, I've only to tell you, that the nigger's got to be
punished. He's done enough to deserve it. Let that satisfy you; and
for the rest I'll be answerable to my father."
What Blue Dick had done the young planter did not condescend to explain.
Nor was it his passion that rendered him reticent; but a secret
consciousness that he was himself in the wrong, and acting from motives
of the meanest revenge.
They had their origin in jealousy. There was a quadroon girl upon the
plantation to whose smiles Blue Dick had aspired. But they were also
coveted by his young master--the master of both.
In such a rivalry the end is easily told. The honest love of Blue Dick
was doomed to a harsh disappointment; for Sylvia, the quadroon, had
yielded her heart less to the dictates of natural partiality, than to
the combined influence of vanity and power. It was a tale oft told in
those days of the so-styled patriarchal institution--happily now at an
end.
Maddened by the discovery of his sweetheart's defection, the young
mulatto could not restrain himself from recrimination. A collision had
occurred between him and his master's son. There had been words and
threatened blows, quickly succeeded by the scene we are describing.
Mr Snively was not the man to hold out long against the threats of
authority. His place was too precious to be risked by an act of idle
chivalry. What to him was the punishment of a slave: a ceremony at
which he was accustomed to assist almost every day of his life?
Besides, he had no particular liking for Blue Dick, who was regarded by
him as a "sassy fellow." Assured against blame from Squire Blackadder,
he was only too ready to cause execution of the order. He proceeded to
do so.
The scene was transpiring in an inclosed court-yard to the rear of the
"big house" [Negro nomenclature for the planter's dwelling], adjoining
also to the stables. On one side stood the pump, a tall obelisk of oak,
with its massive arm of iron, and spout five feet above the level of the
pavement. Underneath traversed a trough, the hallowed trunk of a tree,
designed for the watering of the horses.
In the hot summer sun of the Mississippi Valley it should have been a
sight to give gladness to the eye. Not so with the slaves on Squire
Blackadder's plantation. To them it was more suggestive of sadness and
fear; and they were accustomed to regard it with the same feelings as
one who looks upon a gallows, or a guillotine. More than one half their
number had, one time or another, sat under that spout till its chilly
jet seemed like a sharp spear piercing their wool-covered crania.
The punishment of the pump was too frequent on Squire Blackadder's
plantation to need minute directions as to the mode of administering it.
Mr Snively had only to repeat the order received, to some half-dozen
stalwart slaves, who stood around ready to execute it. The more ready,
that Blue Dick was now to be the victim; for, even with these, the
mulatto youth was far from being a favourite. Full of conceit on
account of his clearer skin, he had always shown himself too proud to
associate with them, and was thus deprived of their sympathies. It was
his first punishment, too; for, although he had often before offended in
a different way, Squire Blackadder had refrained from chastising him.
It was thought strange by all, though none knew the reason; and this
immunity of which he had been accustomed to boast, rendered his now
threatened punishment a thing for his fellow-slaves to rejoice at.
They who were ordered to administer it, went about their work with a
will. At a sign from the overseer, Blue Dick was seized by two of the
field hands, and dragged up to the pump. With cords procured from the
adjacent stable, he was lashed to the trough in such a position that his
crown came directly under the spout, eighteen inches below it. By stays
stretching right and left, his head was so confined that he could not
turn it an inch one way or the other. To have attempted moving it,
would have been to tighten the noose, by which the rope was rove around
his neck.
"Now, give him his shower-bath!" vociferated young Blackadder to the
huge negro who stood by the handle of the pump.
The man, a savage-looking monster, who had himself more than once been
submitted to a similar ducking, obeyed the order with a gleeful grin.
The iron lever, rattling harsh upon its pivot, moved rapidly up and
down; the translucent jet shot forth from the spout, and fell plashing
upon the skull beneath.
The by-standers laughed, and to the victim it would yet have been only
pleasant play; but among those who were jeering him was Sylvia the
quadroon! All were abroad--both the denizens of the negro quarter, and
the domestics of the house--spectators of his suffering and his shame.
Even Clara Blackadder, the sister of his tyrant torturer--a young lady
of about twenty summers, with all the seeming graces of an angel--stood
on the back porch contemplating the scene with as much indifference as
if, from the box of a theatre, she had been looking upon some mere
spectacle of the stage!
If she felt interest in it, it arose from no sympathy with the sufferer.
On the face of her brother was an expression of interest vivid and
pronounced. His features bespoke joy--the joy of a malignant soul
indulging in revenge.
It was a sad picture, that presented by these two young men--the one
exulting in despotic power, the other suffering torture through its
exercise. It was but the old and oft repeated tableau of master and
slave.
And yet were they strangely alike, both in form and feature. With the
ochreous tint extracted from his skin, and the curl combed out of his
hair, Blue Dick might have passed for a brother of Blount Blackadder.
He would have been a little better looking, and certainly showing a
countenance of less sinister cast.
Perhaps not at that moment; for as the agony of physical pain became
added to the mental anguish he was enduring, his features assumed an
expression truly diabolical. Even the jet of water, spreading like a
veil over them, did not hide from the spectators the fiendlike glance
with which he regarded his oppressor. Through the diaphanous sheet they
could see white lips tightly compressed against whiter teeth, that
grinned defiance and vengeance, as his eyes rested on Sylvia. He
uttered no groan; neither did he sue for mercy; though the torture he
was enduring caused him to writhe within his ropes, at the risk of their
throttling him.
There were few present who did not know that he was suffering extreme
pain, and many of them from self-experience. And it was only when one
of these, stirred by vivid memories, ventured to murmur some slight
words of expostulation, that the punishment was suspended.
"He's had enough, I reckon?" said Snively, turning interrogatively
toward the young planter.
"_No_, darn him! not half enough," was the reply; "you haven't given him
the double. But never mind! It'll do for the present. Next time he
offends in like manner, he shall be pumped upon till his thick skull
splits like a cedar rail!"
Saying this, Blount Blackadder turned carelessly upon his heel, and went
off to join his sister in the porch--leaving the overseer to release the
sufferer at his discretion.
The iron handle discontinued its harsh grating; the cruel spout ceased
to pour; and Blue Dick, disengaged from his garotte, was carried
fainting to the stable.
But he was never again subjected to the punishment of the pump. The
young planter did not have the chance to carry out his threat. Three
days after, Blue Dick disappeared from the plantation. And on the
morning of that day, almost simultaneous with his disappearance, was
found the body of the quadroon girl Sylvia, at the bottom of the
peach-orchard, her head split open to the chin!
It had been done by the blade of a wood-axe. There was no mystery about
the matter--no speculation as to the author of the deed. The antecedent
circumstances pointed directly to Blue Dick; and he was at once sought
for.
Sought for, but not found. As soon as the hue-and-cry had gone abroad,
the surrounding settlers, planters as well as poor whites, sprang to
their arms, and into their saddles. The blood-mastiffs were put upon
Blue Dick's track; but spite their keen scent for such game, and the
energetic urging of their owners, they never set fang in the flesh of
the mulatto murderer.