DOOMED TO SLAVERY.
While Mrs. Parris was in her chamber, faint with pain and driven wild by
the fearful developments just made to her, the dead woman lay in the
great easy-chair, wrapped in her gorgeous forest-dress and with the
bright hair falling in masses down her cheek, concealing the death
shadows that lay upon it.
All was still as midnight in the house. Save for a faint sob that came
once or twice from the chamber above, the pretty cabin might have been
taken for a tomb. Old Tituba had been very busy at the great stone oven,
back of the house, baking bread, and that fearful scene had passed in
the parlor without her knowledge. Though a soul had gone into eternity,
and a heart had been broken, in those few minutes, the poor old savage
was ignorant of it all. With her long iron shovel she was launching
great loaves of rye bread into the depths of an enormous oven, and at
last blocked up its yawning mouth with an earthen milk-pan full of
beans, crested with a crisp mass of pork cut in square blocks across the
rind. She had put the great wooden door up, and was stuffing tufts of
grass about the edges to keep the air out, when a lad rushed wildly by
her, leaping over the ground like a deer, and, turning a corner of the
house, disappeared. The lad was dressed in a deer-skin tunic, trimmed so
richly with wampum that it rattled like a hail storm as he fled. She
caught one glimpse of a mass of glossy hair floating on the wind, and
scarlet leggins hanging in shreds around those flying feet.
"It is an Indian child. It is one of our people," cried Tituba, casting
her heavy iron fire-shovel to the ground. "The white men are on his
track; they swarm like snakes in the forest."
But, quickly as the old woman moved, that wild Indian boy entered the
house before she came up. He halted one moment on the threshold,
hesitating and wild. A glance at the great easy-chair, a cry that rang
through and through the house, a leap that seemed rather that of some
wild animal than a human being, and the boy lay prostrate at the dead
woman's feet, with both hands pulling at her dress, while he cried out,
in a voice that made the very air tremble with its pathos,
"Mother! mother! I am here! I am here! They could not hold me! I tore
their bonds asunder like tow. I shot one through the heart, outran the
others. All night long have I been on your trail. Look at me, mother.
Wake up or the enemy will be upon us again."
A stir in the woman's garments that shook all its wampum fringes,
deceived the boy, or he would have known that she was dead.
"Mother! mother! there is no time for rest. They were crowding in the
outskirts of the woods when I came through. Come with me. I know of a
cave in the rocks where you can be safe with my little sister. Did you
know they will sell us for slaves--these white men that talk of a God
higher than Mineto? Mother! mother! I hear a step. They are on us!
They--" he paused suddenly, his hands, clasped and uplifted, seemed
freezing together. He did not breathe. His wild eyes had caught the
deadly pallor of that face, scattered as it were with ashes beneath the
shadowy hair. He shuddered fearfully as the dead woman's garments
rustled around her. A little form, half concealed by the chair, half
buried in the garments, crept to his feet. A tiny hand, cold as snow,
grasped at his dress.
"Brother!"
The little girl spoke in the Indian tongue, and looked into his face
with those dark, piteous eyes.
"Brother!"
The boy snatched her up, and folding her close in his arms, looked in
terrible woe on the dead face resting against the high back of the
chair.
"Oh, mother! mother! have they killed you as well as my father?" he
cried, drooping toward her. "Will you never speak again? Oh, Mineto!
Mineto! what has your people done, that they are chased to death like
wolves and foxes? What had she done that they could not spare her?"
Tituba stood motionless in the doorway. The wail of grief in that young
voice held her there dumb and sorrowful. She understood the Indian
tongue, and knew that this boy was the dead woman's son. A death-chant
rose to her lips; she began to rock to and fro on the threshold. But a
sound on the edge of the wood frightened the impulse away. She turned
and saw a body of armed men coming around the meeting-house. The danger
was close upon them. Tituba darted into the room, snatched the little
girl from her brother's arms, and cried out in the Indian tongue: "Go!
go! leap through the back window. There is a hollow floor under the
oven: creep in. They will not look for you there." She ran into the
kitchen as she spoke, mounted a ladder, and hid the child in a corner of
the garret, heaping strings of dried apples and bunches of herbs upon
her. The little girl lay in her concealment, passive and mute, holding
her breath. Poor thing, she had become used to scenes of peril like
that.
But the lad, that brave Indian boy, scorned to flee for his own safety
alone. There he stood, close to his dead mother, pale as death, but with
a terrible fire in his eyes. He had not distinctly understood old
Tituba, and only knew that danger was near.
The heavy tramp of feet on the gravel path drew his eyes from that cold
form to the window. It was blocked up with iron faces crowned with tall
sugar-loaf hats, which shut out the very sight of heaven.
The savage instincts of a warlike race impelled the boy to resistance.
Tituba had spoken of a back window. He glanced that way, knowing well
that the forest stretched darkly beyond. But there a terrible sight met
him. A dozen or more young warriors, the bravest of those who had
followed King Philip on his last war-path, lay upon the sod, bound hand
and foot with strong withes, shorn of their forest splendor, and with
the eagle feathers, which had been to them a crown of glory, broken in
the tangled hair from which they could not be altogether wrested. There
they lay, those brave, grand savages, like a flock of sheep bound and
ready for the butcher. They had fought valiantly for the land that was
undoubtedly their own, and for that crime were deemed unworthy of
Christian mercy.
The brave boy saw that all avenues of escape were closed to him.
Instinctively, he felt for his bow. It was gone. When first taken a
prisoner, those iron-faced men now glaring at him through the window had
broken it under their feet. But bristling up from behind his mother's
shoulder was a bow and quiver, in which were a half dozen arrows, the
last love-gift of King Philip. Quick as lightning he snatched the bow,
and an arrow flashed through the window.
A howl of pain followed, and a rush at the door, but the lad wheeled
half round, and arrow after arrow leaped from his bow, till the quiver
on that marble woman's back was empty. Then a band of soldiers pressed
in upon him with levelled halberts. Hands that seemed cased in iron
gauntlets seized him by the shoulders, and he was dragged farther over
the threshold stone, struggling against them to the last. There he was
hurled to the earth and bound limb to limb with tough withes. Then two
of the soldiers carried him around a corner of the house and cast him
down as if he had been a dog, among the young warriors, destined to be
sold into slavery.
The lad struggled to a sitting posture, and looked out on the ocean. A
ship, old and weather beaten, lay within the harbor, with her anchor up,
ready for sea. That ship was bound for Bermuda with a cargo of slaves,
all gathered from the glorious forests of New England.
The men destined to fill her hold were chiefs and warriors of as brave a
nation as ever baptized a free soil with blood--men taken in valiant
fight, while contesting for their native woods, and the wigwams which
were to them sacred homes. These unfortunate men were prisoners of war,
helpless, and at the mercy of a victorious foe. The Puritan fathers
being Christians and God-fearing men, would not put their captives to
death: that would have been to sink themselves to a level with savages;
so, after grave deliberation, some fasting, and much prayer, they
resolved to stow away these brave men into the hold of a sea-going
vessel, and let the winds of a benign heaven waft them into perpetual
slavery. The returning ship would bring back heaps of glittering gold in
exchange for this cargo of war prisoners; for the men who fought under
King Philip were powerful and capable of severe toil. They had not
yielded readily to the rifle, but peradventure the lash might prove a
more effective instrument of civilization.
On this ship the son of King Philip looked with burning eyes, while the
bonds with which they had lashed his limbs together cut purple hollows
into his flesh. He knew that the sails which were now unfurling would
bear him far away from the forest where his father had perished, and
where hundreds of his tribe were now sheltering themselves from the
white man's wrath.
There the lad sat, or rather knelt; every nerve in his body
strained--every drop of his savage blood burning--every thought a
denunciation. But no one of those iron-faced men heeded him.
The two soldiers who had cast the boy down amid his father's warriors,
turned toward the sea.
"Lo," said one, extending his hand, "the wind is fresh from the east.
Yonder, half-way to the shore, comes a boat. Take these sinful creatures
to the beach, brethren, while I go in and bring forth the woman and her
pappoose."
The boy uttered a sharp cry, and turned his glance on the man, who
strode toward the house. He went rudely up to the great chair, and laid
his hand on the woman's shoulder, giving it a slight shake. The fringes
on her dress rattled like hail upon crusted snow. The man took his hand
suddenly away, hesitated an instant, and then swept back the hair from
that still face. The certain presence of death touched even his granite
heart. He bent down, and was folding the deer-skin robe more composedly
about the form, when a little creature came gliding through the door,
and stole close up to the chair before he saw that it was the child he
sought. She was a fearless little thing at all times; now, some vague
idea that the man was about to harm her mother made her eyes wildly
luminous, as she lifted them to his face.
"Go away," she said, in broken English, pushing him with all her tiny
strength. "Go!" The fire in those beautiful eyes enkindled the stern
cruelty of the man. He snatched her up in his arms and bore her forth
with a grim smile on his bearded lip.
Then old Tituba saw what had happened and followed him, uttering wild
cries of distress. The man took no heed, but carried his captive around
the house in sight of her brother.
A yell of mingled rage and despair broke from that young heart. The lad
tore and strained at his bonds like a trapped panther--fiery tears
leaped to his eyes, specks of foam flew from his mouth.
"Not her, not her!" he shrieked, in English. "She is only a little baby.
Let them whip me, sell me, kill me. I will work and suffer for both."
The anguish in that young voice reached Mrs. Parris, where she lay with
her face buried in the pillows of her bed. Like a beautiful white nun
she came out of her chamber, down the stairs, and into the midst of
those Puritan soldiers. Terrible suffering had cast its ashes over her;
but there was resolution in her eyes, pain on her forehead.
She went up to the man, who still held the little savage and took her
gently from his arms.
"She is mine. The minister will care for her. Little children are not
our enemies. Christians do not make slaves of them."
There was something in the very gentleness of her words that almost
conquered the man, who muttered a gloomy protest. The little creature
clung to her with thrilling tenacity.
"Leave the child with me. I will answer for its safety to your leader.
I, the wife of Samuel Parris, whom you all know."
There was something in the face of this gentle young matron that
enforced respect even from the men who had so rudely invaded her
dwelling--a depth and intensity of suffering that prevailed more surely
than command.
"Nay, if you will take charge of the little heathen we have nothing to
say. In the minister's house she may find a gate of salvation open."
A spasm of pain swept the fair face of the matron; but her soul was
strong enough for the moment to put this physical anguish aside. She
took the infant in her arms, folded it close to her aching bosom, and
went with it into the house. Old Tituba stood in the door.
"Take her, take her! and God have mercy on us all!" cried Elizabeth,
tottering forward and giving up the child. Then she went feebly up the
stairs and entered her chamber again.
The princely Indian boy, true to the reticent instincts of his father's
race, became silent as marble when he saw that his little sister would
not be harmed. Even the cry of joy that rose to his lips when the child
was given up he bravely suppressed. He would not, by one action, let his
persecutors know how dear the little wanderer was to him. Had he spoken
a word, or challenged attention by a gesture, the minister's wife would
have learned that her sister's son was in peril, and might perhaps have
saved him also. But he was too brave for complaint, and she went on,
ignorant of his danger to the hour of her death.
The tide rose, the winds blew favorably, that old ship unfurled its
canvas and sent out signals that its human crew was waited for. Down to
the beach those brave young savages were forced, into the boats and away
forever more.
Before night-fall that craft was far off on her horrible errand,
plunging along that vast desert of waters, with oh! what terrible agony
shut down under her closed hatches.
There in her hold, dark as the bottomless pit, with every breath of the
stifled air foul with the scent of bilge water, lay those children of
the great forest; which, broad, and green, and noble as it was, had
hardly afforded scope for their heroic energies a month before. Down in
impenetrable blackness, beneath the roaring waters that beat against
that creaking hull, like wild animals, riotous with hunger, they had
been cast in heaps, with less mercy than would have been yielded to mad
dogs or trapped tigers. Not one glimpse of the glorious old woods from
which they had been torn--not even a fragment of the blue sky was given
to those bloodshot eyes; but, lashed onward by the waves, stifled,
hungry, and broken-hearted, they were swept into slavery.
When Samuel Parris reached home that night, he found in place of the
gentle wife whom he had left singing at her work, the dead woman of the
forest, lying in her gorgeous habiliments, and the little child, whose
stillness was more appalling than that of the corpse, crouching at her
feet.
Shocked at the sight, but thinking first of his wife, the minister,
after a vain attempt to question the child, followed the sound of broken
voices that came faintly to his ear, and entered his own chamber. A
moment after he went hurriedly from the house, returned with another
person, and stood all night long holding his breath by the chamber door.
At last he came away, moving like a ghost through the dim morning, and
entered the little sitting-room where his angel had been seated so
tranquilly when he went out, not yet twenty-four hours agone. The little
girl, who had stayed by her mother all night, arose, and stood looking
him in the eyes with a steady gaze that might have made any man shrink,
for it was unearthly in its earnestness.
While that weird glance was upon him, a low cry rang through the house,
a cry that made every drop in the old man's veins leap, and every nerve
tremble.
"Thank God! Oh, my God, my God, how _can_ I thank thee enough!" and the
old man wept tenderly.
As if mocking the ecstasy of his tears, the little girl smiled in his
face--but oh, such a wintry smile--and went back to her mother. The old
man shuddered.
After a time, he went up to the chamber of his wife. She lay upon the
bed with the babe he was to look upon for the first time, not folded to
her bosom, but lying apart, while she gazed wistfully at its little
features, with a weary look full of dull anguish, that never would
change to the lovelight which should brighten a mother's face.
The minister, with tears in his eyes, leaned over her, and would have
pressed his lips upon her forehead, but she shrunk down in the bed with
a low moan, as a wounded fawn shudders at the touch of its captor, and
when he sought to comfort her, and speak out the exquisite joy that
filled his whole being, she looked up with those piteous eyes, and
muttered:
"She was my sister--my sister!"
These were all the words she ever uttered. The shock of his sudden
presence had exhausted the last remnants of her strength. She only
breathed fainter and fainter, till her child, like the little one below,
was motherless.
The two sisters were buried side by side, the same tree overshadowed
them, and in the course of time the flowers that blossomed on one grave
crept over the other. Many tears were shed over the minister's wife as
they lowered her into the earth, but not one--not one--over the
grand-hearted forest-woman. For her Samuel Parris could not weep. He
looked upon her very coffin with terror. The Nemesis of his life was
there, and would haunt him forever and ever. He stood by the open grave,
bowed down with something more awful than grief. In the happiness of his
married life he had grown vigorous and upright; but now his shoulders
stooped, and his limbs shook like the branches of a dead tree. Poor old
man! who can wonder that Samuel Parris never held up his head again!
As for the child, Abigail Williams, she came of a race to whom revenge
stands in the place of religion--a race even to whose women and children
tears are a reproach. At her mother's grave she did not forget the proud
lessons of the kingly savage who taught even his women to suffer
bravely.
They had taken off her Indian dress, it is true, but what power could
quench the fire in that young heart! She did not comprehend the meaning
of those black garments, only that she was alone, utterly alone, among
all those people, who had been cruel enough to let her mother die.
From that double grave the young savage went back to old Tituba, the
Indian woman, never in her whole life to know one hour of careless
childhood.
Thus it was that Abigail Williams became the adopted child of Samuel
Parris, and this was the girl who, far advanced towards womanhood now,
was left in charge of the minister's house when he made his eventful
visit to Boston.