THE PURSUIT.
I sauntered out, after the events recorded in the last chapter, to
inhale the fresh air of the morning. A slight rain had fallen during the
night, and it still moistened the dead leaves which carpeted the woods,
making an extended walk out of the question; so, seating myself on the
trunk of a fallen tree, in the vicinity of the house, I awaited the hour
for breakfast. I had not remained there long before I heard the voices
of my host and Madam P---- on the front piazza:
"I tell you, Alice, I cannot--must not do it. If I overlook this, the
discipline of the plantation is at an end."
"Do what you please with him when you return," replied the lady, "but do
not chain him up, and leave me, at such a time, alone. You know Jim is
the only one I can depend on."
"Well, have your own way. You know, my darling, I would not cause you a
moment's uneasiness, but I must follow up this d----d Moye."
I was seated where I could hear, though I could not see the speakers,
but it was evident from the tone of the last remark, that an action
accompanied it quite as tender as the words. Being unwilling to
overhear more of a private conversation, I rose and approached them.
"Ah! my dear fellow," said the Colonel, on perceiving me, "are you
stirring so early? I was about to send to your room to ask if you'll go
with me up the country. My d----d overseer has got away, and I must
follow him at once."
"I'll go with pleasure," I replied. "Which way do you think Moye has
gone?"
"The shortest cut to the railroad, probably; but old Caesar will track
him."
A servant then announced breakfast--an early one having been prepared.
We hurried through the meal with all speed, and the other preparations
being soon over, were in twenty minutes in our saddles, and ready for
the journey. The mulatto coachman, with a third horse, was at the door,
ready to accompany us. As we mounted, the Colonel said to him:
"Go and call Sam, the driver."
The darky soon returned with the heavy, ugly-visaged black who had been
whipped, by Madam P----'s order, the day before.
"Sam," said his master, "I shall be gone some days, and I leave the
field-work in your hands. Let me have a good account of you when I
return."
"Yas, massa, you shill dat," replied the negro.
"Put Jule--Sam's Jule--into the woods, and see that she does full
tasks," continued the Colonel.
"Haint she wanted 'mong de nusses, massa?"
"Put some one else there--give her field-work; she needs it."
On large plantations the young children of the field-women are left with
them only at night, and are herded together during the day, in a
separate cabin, in charge of nurses. These nurses are feeble, sickly
women, or recent mothers; and the fact of Jule's being employed in that
capacity was evidence that she was unfit for outdoor labor.
Madam P----, who was waiting on the piazza to see us off, seemed about
to remonstrate against this arrangement, but she hesitated a moment, and
in that moment we had bidden her "Good-bye," and galloped away.
We were soon at the cabin of the negro-hunter, and the coachman,
dismounting, called him out.
"Hurry up, hurry up," said the Colonel, as Sandy appeared, "we haven't a
moment to spare."
"Jest so--jest so, Cunnel; I'll jine ye in a jiffin," replied he of the
reddish extremities.
Emerging from the shanty with provoking deliberation--the impatience of
my host had infected me--the clay-eater slowly proceeded to mount the
horse of the negro, while his dirt-bedraggled wife, and clay-encrusted
children, followed close at his heels, the younger ones huddling around
for the tokens of paternal affection usual at parting. Whether it was
the noise they made, or their frightful aspect, I know not, but the
horse, a spirited animal, took fright on their appearance, and nearly
broke away from the negro, who was holding him. Seeing this, the Colonel
said:
"Clear out, you young scare-crows. Into the house with you."
"They arn't no more scare-crows than yourn, Cunnel J----," said the
mother, in a decidedly belligerent tone. "You may 'buse my old man--he
kin stand it--but ye shan't blackguard my young 'uns!"
The Colonel laughed, and was about to make a good-natured reply, when
Sandy yelled out:
"Gwo enter the house and shet up, ye---- ----."
With this affectionate farewell, he turned his horse and led the way up
the road.
The dog, who was a short distance in advance, soon gave a piercing howl,
and started off at the speed of a reindeer. He had struck the trail, and
urging our horses to their fastest speed, we followed.
We were all well mounted, but the mare the Colonel had given me was a
magnificent animal, as fleet as the wind, and with a gait so easy that
her back seemed a rocking-chair. Saddle-horses at the South are trained
to the gallop--Southern riders not deeming it necessary that one's
breakfast should be churned into a Dutch cheese by a trotting nag, in
order that he may pass for a horseman.
We had ridden on at a perfect break-neck pace for half an hour, when the
Colonel shouted to our companion:
"Sandy, call the dog in; the horses wont last ten miles at this
gait--we've a long ride before us."
The dirt-eater did as he was bidden, and we soon settled into a gentle
gallop.
We had passed through a dense forest of pines, but were emerging into a
"bottom country," where some of the finest deciduous trees--then brown
and leafless, but bearing promise of the opening beauty of
spring--reared, along with the unfading evergreen, their tall stems in
the air. The live-oak, the sycamore, the Spanish mulberry, the holly,
and the persimmon--gaily festooned with wreaths of the white and yellow
jessamine, the woodbine and the cypress-moss, and bearing here and there
a bouquet of the mistletoe, with its deep green and glossy leaves
upturned to the sun--flung their broad arms over the road, forming an
archway grander and more beautiful than any the hand of man ever wove
for the greatest hero the world has worshipped.
The woods were free from underbrush, and a coarse, wiry grass, unfit for
fodder, and scattered through them in detached patches, was the only
vegetation visible. The ground was mainly covered with the leaves and
burrs of the pine.
We passed great numbers of swine, feeding on these burrs, and now and
then a horned animal browsing on the cypress-moss where it hung low on
the trees. I observed that nearly all the swine were marked, though they
seemed too wild to have ever seen an owner, or a human habitation. They
were a long, lean, slab-sided race, with legs and shoulders like deer,
and bearing no sort of resemblance to the ordinary hog, except in the
snout, and that feature was so much longer and sharper than the nose of
the Northern swine, that I doubt if Agassiz would class the two as one
species. However, they have their uses--they make excellent bacon, and
are "death on snakes." Ireland itself is not more free from the
serpentine race than are the districts frequented by these long-nosed
quadrupeds.
"We call them Carolina race-horses," said the Colonel, as he finished an
account of their peculiarities.
"Race-horses! Why, are they fleet of foot?"
"Fleet as deer. I'd match one against an ordinary horse at any time."
"Come, my friend, you're practising on my ignorance of natural history."
"Not a bit of it. See! there's a good specimen yonder. If we can get him
into the road, and fairly started, I'll bet you a dollar he'll beat
Sandy's mare on a half-mile stretch--Sandy to hold the stakes and have
the winnings."
"Well, agreed," I said, laughing, "and I'll give the pig ten rods the
start."
"No," replied the Colonel, "you can't afford it. He'll _have_ to start
ahead, but you'll need that in the count. Come, Sandy, will you go in
for the pile?"
I'm not sure that the native would not have run a race with Old Nicholas
himself, for the sake of so much money. To him it was a vast sum; and as
he thought of it, his eyes struck small sparks, and his enormous beard
and mustachio vibrated with something that faintly resembled a laugh.
Replying to the question, he said:
"Kinder reckon I wull, Cunnel; howsomdever, I keeps the stakes, ony
how?"
"Of course," said the planter, "but be honest--win if you can."
Sandy halted his horse in the road, while the planter and I took to the
woods on either side of the way. The Colonel soon manoeuvred to
separate the selected animal from the rest of the herd, and, without
much difficulty, got him into the road, where, by closing down on each
flank, we kept him till he and Sandy were fairly under way.
"He'll keep to the road when once started," said the Colonel, laughing:
"and he'll show you some of the tallest running you ever saw in your
life."
Away they went. At first the pig, seeming not exactly to comprehend the
programme, cantered off at a leisurely pace, though he held his own.
Soon, however, he cast an eye behind him--halted a moment to collect his
thoughts and reconnoitre--and then, lowering his head and elevating his
tail, put forth all his speed. And such speed! Talk of a deer, the wind,
or a steam-engine--they are not to be compared with it. Nothing in
nature I ever saw run--except, it may be, a Southern tornado, or a Sixth
Ward politician--could hope to distance that pig. He gained on the horse
at every step, and it was soon evident that my dollar was gone!
"'In for a shilling, in for a pound,' is the adage, so, turning to the
Colonel, I said, as intelligibly as my horse's rapid pace and my excited
risibilities would allow:
"I see I've lost, but I'll go you another dollar that _you_ can't beat
the pig!"
"No--sir!" the Colonel got out in the breaks of his laughing explosions;
"you can't hedge on me in that manner. I'll go a dollar that _you_ can't
do it, and your mare is the fastest on the road. She won me a thousand
not a month ago."
"Well, I'll do it--Sandy to have the stakes."
"Agreed," said the Colonel, and away _we_ went.
The swinish racer was about a hundred yards ahead when I gave the mare
the reins, and told her to go. And she _did_ go. She flew against the
wind with a motion so rapid that my face, as it clove the air, felt as
if cutting its way through a solid body, and the trees, as we passed,
seemed struck with panic, and running for dear life in the opposite
direction.
For a few moments I thought the mare was gaining, and I turned to the
Colonel with an exultant look.
"Don't shout till you win, my boy," he called out from the distance
where I was fast leaving him and Sandy.
I _did not shout_, for spite of all my efforts the space between me and
the pig seemed to widen. Yet I kept on, determined to win, till, at the
end of a short half-mile, we reached the Waccamaw--the swine still a
hundred yards ahead! There his pigship halted, turned coolly around,
eyed me for a moment, then with a quiet, deliberate trot, turned off
into the woods.
A bend in the road kept my companions out of sight for a few moments,
and when they came up I had somewhat recovered my breath, though the
mare was blowing hard, and reeking with foam.
"Well," said the Colonel, "what do you think of our bacon 'as it runs?'"
"I think the Southern article can't be beat, whether raw or cooked,
standing or running."
At this moment the hound, who had been leisurely jogging along in the
rear, disdaining to join in the race in which his dog of a master and I
had engaged, came up, and dashing quickly on to the river's edge, set up
a most dismal howling. The Colonel dismounted, and clambering down the
bank, which was there twenty feet high, and very steep, shouted:
"The d----d Yankee has swum the stream!"
"Why so?" I asked.
"To cover his tracks and delay pursuit; but he has overshot the mark.
There is no other road within ten miles, and he must have taken to this
one again beyond here. He's lost twenty minutes by this manoeuvre.
Come, Sandy, call in the dog, we'll push on a little faster."
"But he tuk to t'other bank, Cunnel. Shan't we trail him thar?" asked
Sandy.
"And suppose he found a boat here," I suggested, "and made the shore
some ways down?"
"He couldn't get Firefly into a flat--we should only waste time in
scouring the other bank. The swamp this side the next run has forced him
into the road within five miles. The trick is transparent. He took me
for a fool," replied the Colonel, answering both questions at once.
I had reined my horse out of the road, and when my companions turned to
go, was standing at the edge of the bank, overlooking the river.
Suddenly I saw, on one of the abutments of the bridge, what seemed a
long, black log--strange to say, _in motion_!
"Colonel," I shouted, "see there! a live log as I'm a white man!"
"Lord bless you," cried the planter, taking an observation, "it's an
alligator!"
I said no more, but pressing on after the hound, soon left my companions
out of sight. For long afterward, the Colonel, in a doleful way, would
allude to my lamentable deficiency in natural history--particularly in
such branches as bacon and "live logs."
I had ridden about five miles, keeping well up with the hound, and had
reached the edge of the swamp, when suddenly the dog darted to the side
of the road, and began to yelp in the most frantic manner. Dismounting,
and leading my horse to the spot, I made out plainly the print of
Firefly's feet in the sand. There was no mistaking it--that round shoe
on the off forefoot. (The horse had, when a colt, a cracked hoof, and
though the wound was outgrown, the foot was still tender.) These prints
were dry, while the tracks we had seen at the river were filled with
water, thus proving that the rain had ceased while the overseer was
passing between the two places. He was therefore not far off.
The Colonel and Sandy soon rode up.
"Caught a live log! eh, my good fellow?" asked my host, with a laugh.
"No; but here's the overseer as plain as daylight; and his tracks not
wet!"
Quickly dismounting, he examined the ground, and then exclaimed:
"The d--l----it's a fact--here not four hours ago! He has doubled on
his tracks since, I'll wager, and not made twenty miles--we'll have him
before night, sure! Come, mount--quick."
We sprang into our saddles, and again pressed rapidly on after the dog,
who followed the scent at the top of his speed.
Some three miles more of wet, miry road took us to the run of which the
Colonel had spoken. Arrived there, we found the hound standing on the
bank, wet to the skin, and looking decidedly chop-fallen.
"Death and d----n!" shouted the Colonel; "the dog has swum the run, and
lost the trail on the other side! The d--d scoundrel has taken to the
water, and balked us after all! Take up the dog, Sandy, and try him
again over there."
The native spoke to Caesar, who bounded on to the horse's back in front
of his master. They then crossed the stream, which there was about
fifty yards wide, and so shallow that in the deepest part the water
merely touched the horse's breast; but it was so roiled by the recent
rain that we could not distinguish the foot-prints of the horse beneath
the surface.
The dog ranged up and down the opposite bank, but all to no purpose: the
overseer had not been there. He had gone either up or down the
stream--in which direction, was now the question. Calling Sandy back to
our side of the run, the Colonel proceeded to hold a 'council of war.'
Each one gave his opinion, which was canvassed by the others, with as
much solemnity as if the fate of the Union hung on the decision.
The native proposed we should separate--one go up, another down the
stream, and the third, with the dog, follow the road; to which he
thought Moye had finally returned. Those who should explore the run
would easily detect the horse's tracks where he had left it, and then
taking a straight course to the road, all might meet some five miles
further on, at a place indicated.
I gave my adhesion to Sandy's plan, but the Colonel overruled it on the
ground of the waste of time that would be incurred in thus recovering
the overseer's trail.
"Why not," he said, "strike at once for the end of his route? Why follow
the slow steps he took in order to throw us off the track? He has not
come back to this road. Ten miles below there is another one leading
also to the railway. He has taken that. We might as well send Sandy and
the dog back and go on by ourselves."
"But if bound for the Station, why should he wade through the creek
here, ten miles out of his way? Why not go straight on by the road?" I
asked.
"Because he knew the dog would track him, and he hoped by taking to the
run to make me think he had crossed the country instead of striking for
the railroad."
I felt sure the Colonel was wrong, but knowing him to be tenacious of
his own opinions, I made no further objection.
Directing Sandy to call on Madam P---- and acquaint her with our
progress, he then dismissed the negro-hunter, and once more led the way
up the road.
The next twenty miles, like our previous route, lay through an unbroken
forest. As we left the watercourses, we saw only the gloomy pines, which
there--the region being remote from the means of transportation--were
seldom tapped, and presented few of the openings that invite the weary
traveller to the dwelling of the hospitable planter.
After a time the sky, which had been bright and cloudless all the
morning, grew overcast, and gave out tokens of a coming storm. A black
cloud gathered in the west, and random flashes darted from it far off in
the distance; then gradually it neared us; low mutterings sounded in the
air, and the tops of the tall pines a few miles away, were lit up now
and then with a fitful blaze, all the brighter for the deeper gloom that
succeeded. Then a terrific flash and peal broke directly over us, and a
great tree, struck by a red-hot bolt, fell with a deafening crash, half
way across our path. Peal after peal followed, and then the rain--not
filtered into drops as it falls from our colder sky, but in broad,
blinding sheets--poured full and heavy on our shelterless heads.
"Ah! there it comes!" shouted the Colonel. "God have mercy upon us!"
As he spoke, a crashing, crackling, thundering roar rose above the
storm, filling the air, and shaking the solid earth till it trembled
beneath our horses' feet, as if upheaved by a volcano. Nearer and nearer
the sound came, till it seemed that all the legions of darkness were
unloosed in the forest, and were mowing down the great pines as the
mower mows the grass with his scythe. Then an awful, sweeping crash
thundered directly at our backs, and turning round, as if to face a foe,
my horse, who had borne the roar and the blinding flash till then
unmoved, paralyzed with dread, and panting for breath, sunk to the
ground; while close at my side the Colonel, standing erect in his
stirrups, his head uncovered to the pouring sky, cried out:
"THANK GOD, WE ARE SAVED!"
There--not three hundred yards in our rear, had passed the
TORNADO--uprooting trees, prostrating dwellings, and sending many a soul
to its last account, but sparing _us_ for another day! For thirty miles
through the forest it had mowed a swath of two hundred feet, and then
moved on to stir the ocean to its briny depths.
With a full heart, I remounted, and turning my horse, pressed on in the
rain. We said not a word till a friendly opening pointed the way to a
planter's dwelling. Then calling to me to follow, the Colonel dashed up
the by-path which led to the mansion, and in five minutes we were
warming our chilled limbs before the cheerful fire that roared and
crackled on its broad hearth-stone.