_BLACK AND WHITE._
Penn attached his handkerchief to the end of the musket, and standing
upon the ledge, waved it over the bushes. Carl, recognizing him, was the
first to scramble up the height. The whole party followed, each sturdy
patriot wringing the schoolmaster's hand with hearty congratulations
when they learned what use he had made of the rebel musket.
"But the whole credit of the manoeuvre belongs not to me, but to the
negro Pomp!" And he related the story of his own rescue and theirs.
The patriots looked grave.
"Where is the fellow?" asked Stackridge.
"Being a fugitive slave, he feared lest he should find little favor in
the eyes of his master's neighbors," said Penn.
"That's where he was right!" said Deslow, with a bigoted and unforgiving
expression. "Nothing under the sun shall make me give encouragement to a
nigger's running away."
Two or three others nodded grim assent to this first principle of the
slaveholder's discipline. Penn was fired with exasperation and scorn,
and would have separated himself from these narrow-minded patriots on
the spot, had not Stackridge jumped up from the ground upon which he had
thrown himself, and, striking his gun barrel fiercely, exclaimed,--
"Now, that's what I call cursed foolishness, Deslow! and every man that
holds to that way of thinking had better go over to t'other side to
oncet! If we can't make up our minds to sacrifice our property, and,
what's more to some folks, our prejudices, in the cause we're fighting
for, we may as well stop before we stir a step further. I'm a
slaveholder, and always have been; but I swear, I can't say as I ever
felt it was such a divine institution as some try to make it out, and I
don't believe there's a man here that thinks in his heart that it's just
right. And as for the niggers running away, my private sentiment is,
that I don't blame 'em a mite. You or I, Deslow, would run in their
place; you know you would." And Stackridge wiped his brow savagely.
"And as for this particular case," said Captain Grudd, with a gleam of
light in his lean and swarthy countenance, "don't le's be blind to our
own interests; don't le's be downright fools. I've said from the first
that slavery and the rebellion was brother and sister,--they go
together; and I've made up my mind to stand by my country and the old
flag, whatever comes of the institution." All, except the conservative
Deslow, applauded this resolution. "Then consider," added the captain,
his deliberate, impressive manner proving quite as effective as
Stackridge's more excited and fiery style,--"here we are fighting for
our very lives and liberties; and if, as I say, slavery's the cause of
this war, then we're fighting against slavery, the best we can fix it.
How monstrous absurd 'twill be, then, for us to refuse the assistance of
any nigger that has it to give! Bythewood, Pomp's owner, is one of the
hottest secessionists I know; and d'ye think I want Pomp sent back to
him, to help that side, when he has shown that he can be of such mighty
good service to us? I move that we send the professor to make a treaty
with him. What do you say, Mr. Hapgood?"
"I say," replied Penn with enthusiasm, "that he and Cudjo are in a
condition to do infinitely more for us than we can do for them; and if
their alliance can be secured, I say that we ought by all means to
secure it."
"That depends," said Grudd, "upon what we intend to do. Are we going to
make a stand here, and see if the loyal part of old Tennessee will rise
up and sustain us? or are we going to fight our way over the mountains,
and never come back till a Union army comes with us to set things a
little to rights here?"
"Wa'al," said Withers, who concealed a hardy courage and earnest
patriotism under a phlegmatic and droll exterior, "while we're
discussin' that question, I reckon we may as well have breakfast. This
is as good a place as any,--we can take turns keeping a lookout from
that ledge."
He proceeded to kindle a fire in the hollow. The fugitives, in passing a
field of corn, had thrust into their pockets a plentiful supply of green
ears, which they now husked and roasted. There was a spring in the rocks
near by, from which they drank lying on their faces, and dipping in
their beards. This was their breakfast; during which Penn's mission to
the blacks was fully discussed, and finally decided upon.
The meal concluded, the refugees resumed their march, and entered an
immense thick wood farther up the mountain. In a cool and shadowy spot
they halted once more; and here Penn took leave of them, setting out on
his visit to the cave.
He had a mile to travel over a rough, wild region, where the fires that
had formerly devastated it had left the only visible marks of a near
civilization. In a tranquil little dell that had grown up to wild grass,
he came suddenly upon a horse feeding. It was Stackridge's useful nag,
which looked up from his lofty grove-shaded pasture with a low whinny of
recognition as Penn patted his neck and passed along.
A furlong or two farther on the well-known ravine opened,--dark, silent,
profound, with its shaggy sides, one in shadow and the other in the sun,
and its little embowered brook trickling far down there amid mossy
stones;--as lonesome, wild, and solitary as if no human eye had ever
beheld it before.
Penn glided over the ledges, and descended along the narrow shelf of
rock, behind the thickets that screened the entrance to the cave.
Sunlight, and mountain wind, and summer heat he left behind, and entered
the cool, still, gloomy abode.
Cudjo ran to the mouth of the cave to meet him. "Lef me frow dis yer
blanket ober your shoulders, while ye cool off; cotch yer de'f cold, if
ye don't. De ol' man's a 'speckin' ye."
Penn was relieved to learn that Mr. Villars had arrived in safety, and
gratified to find him lying comfortably on the bed conversing with Pomp.
"By the blessing of God, I am very well indeed, my dear Penn. These
excellent fellow-Christians have taken the best of care of me. The
atmosphere of the cave, which I thought at first chilly, I now find
deliciously pure and refreshing. And its gloom, you know, don't trouble
me," added the blind old man with a smile. "Have you had any more
trouble since Pomp left you?"
"No," said Penn; "thanks to him. Pomp, our friends want to see you and
thank you, and they have sent me to bring you to them."
The negro merely shrugged his shoulders, and smiled.
"What good der tanks do to we?" cried Cudjo. "Ain't one ob dem ar men
but what would been glad to hab us cotched and licked for runnin' away,
fur de 'xample to de tudder niggers."
"If that was true of them once, it is not now," said Penn. "Yet, Pomp,
if you feel that there is the least danger in going to them, do not go."
"Danger?" The negro's proud and lofty look showed what he thought of
that. "Cudjo, make Mr. Hapgood a cup of coffee; he looks tired. You have
had a hard time, I reckon, since you left us."
"Him stay wid us now till he chirk up again," said Cudjo, running to his
coffee-box. "Him and de ol' gemman stay--nobody else."
While the coffee was making, Penn, sitting on one of the stone blocks
which he had named giant's stools, repeated such parts of the late
breakfast talk of Stackridge and his friends as he thought would
interest Pomp and win his confidence. Then he drank the strong, black
beverage in silence, leaving the negro to his own reflections.
"Are you going again?" said Pomp.
"Yes; I promised them I would return."
"Take some coffee and a kettle to boil it in; they will be glad of it, I
should think."
"O Pomp! you know how to do good even to your enemies! What shall I say
to them for you?"
"What I have to say to them I will say myself," said Pomp, taking his
rifle in one hand, and the kettle in the other, to Cudjo's great wrath
and disgust.
He set out with Penn immediately. They found the patriots reposing
themselves about the roots of the forest trees, on the banks of a stream
that came gurgling and plashing down the mountain side. Above them
spread the beautiful green tops of maples, tinted with sunshine and
softly rustling in the breeze. The curving banks formed here a little
natural amphitheatre, carpeted with moss and old leaves, on which they
sat or reclined, with their hats off and their guns at their sides.
A sentry posted on the edge of the forest brought in Penn and his
companion. There was a stir of interest among the patriots, and some of
them rose to their feet. Stackridge, Grudd, and two or three others
cordially offered the negro their hands, and pledged him their gratitude
and friendship. Pomp accepted these tokens of esteem in silence,--his
countenance maintaining a somewhat haughty expression, his lips firm,
his eyes kindling with a strange light.
Penn took the kettle, and proceeded, with Carl's help, to make a fire
and prepare coffee for the company, intently listening the while to all
that was said.
Jutting from one bank of the stream, which washed its base, was a huge,
square block covered with dark-green moss. Upon this Pomp stepped, and
rested his rifle upon it, and bared his massive and splendid head, and
stood facing his auditors with a placid smile, under the canopy of
leaves. There was not among them all so noble a figure of a man as he
who stood upon the rock; and he seemed to have chosen this somewhat
theatrical attitude in order to illustrate, by his own imposing personal
presence, the words that rose to his lips.
"You will excuse me, gentlemen, if I cannot forget that I am talking
with those who buy and sell men like me!"
Men like him! The suggestion seemed for a moment to strike the
slave-owning patriots dumb with surprise and embarrassment.
"No, no, Pomp," cried Stackridge, "not men like you--there are few like
you anywhere."
"I wish there was more like him, and that I owned a good gang of 'em!"
muttered the man Deslow.
"I don't," replied Withers, with a drawl which had a deep meaning in it;
"twould be too much like sleeping on a row of powder barrels, with
lighted candles stuck in the bung holes. Dangerous, them big knowin'
niggers be."
Pomp did not answer for a minute, but stood as if gathering power into
himself, with one long, deep breath inflating his chest, and casting a
glance upward through the sun-lit summer foliage.
"You buy and sell men, and women, and children of my race. If I am not
like them, it is because circumstances have lifted me out of the
wretched condition in which it is your constant policy and endeavor to
keep us. By your laws--the laws you make and uphold--I am this day
claimed as a slave; by your laws I am hunted as a slave;--yes, some of
you here have joined your neighbor in the hunt for me, as if I was no
more than a wild beast to be hounded and shot down if I could not be
caught. Now tell me what union or concord there can be between you and
me!"
"I own," said Deslow,--for Pomp's gleaming eyes had darted significant
lightnings at him,--"I did once come up here with Bythewood to see if we
could find you. Not that I had anything against you, Pomp,--not a thing;
and as for your quarrel with your master, I ain't sure but you had the
right on't; but you know as well as we do that we can't countenance a
nigger's running away, under any circumstances."
"No!" said Pomp, with sparkling sarcasm. "Your secessionist neighbors
revolt against the mildest government in the world, and resort to
bloodshed on account of some fancied wrongs. You revolt against them
because you prefer the old government to theirs. Your forefathers went
to war with the mother country on account of a few taxes. But a negro
must not revolt, he must not even attempt to run away, although he feels
the relentless heel of oppression grinding into the dust all his rights,
all that is dear to him, all that he loves! A white man may take up arms
to defend a bit of property; but a black man has no right to rise up and
defend either his wife, or his child, or his liberty, or even his own
life, against his master!"
Only the narrow-minded Deslow had the confidence to meet this stunning
argument, enforced as it was by the speaker's powerful manner, superb
physical manhood, and superior intelligence.
"You know, Pomp, that your condition, to begin with, is very different
from that of any white man. Your relation to your master is not that of
a man to his neighbor, or of a citizen to the government; it is that of
property to its owner."
"Property!" There was something almost wicked in the wild, bright glance
with which the negro repeated this word. "How came we property, sir?"
"Our laws make you so, and you have been acquired as property," said
Deslow, not unkindly, but in his bigoted, obstinate way. "So, really,
Pomp, you can't blame us for the view we take of it, though it does
conflict a little with your choice in the matter."
"But suppose I can show you that you are wrong, and that even by your
own laws we are not, and cannot be, property?" said Pomp, with a
princely courtesy, looking down from the rock upon Deslow, so evidently
in every way his inferior. "I will admit your title to a lot of land you
may purchase, or reclaim from nature; or to an animal you have captured,
or bought, or raised. But a man's natural, original owner is--himself.
Now, I never sold myself. My father never sold himself. My father was
stolen by pirates on the coast of Africa, and brought to this country,
and sold. The man who bought him bought what had been stolen. By your
own laws you cannot hold stolen property. Though it is bought and sold a
thousand times, let the original owner appear, and it is his,--nobody
else has the shadow of a claim. My father was stolen property, if he was
property at all. He was his own rightful owner. Though he had been
robbed of himself, that made no difference with the justice of the case.
It was so with my mother. It is so with me. It is the same with every
black man on this continent. Not one ever sold himself, or can be sold,
or can be owned. For to say that what a man steals or takes by force is
his, to dispose of as he chooses, is to go back to barbarism: it is not
the law of any Christian land. So much," added Pomp, blowing the words
from him, as if all the false arguments in favor of slavery were no more
to the man's soul, and its eternal, God-given rights, than the breath he
blew contemptuously forth into those mountain woods,--"so much for the
claim of PROPERTY!"
Penn was so delighted with this triumphant declaration of principles
that he could have flung his hat into the maple boughs and shouted
"Bravo!" He deemed it discreet, however, to confine the expression of
his enthusiasm to a tight grasp on Carl's sympathetic hand, and to watch
the effect of the speech on the rest.
"Deslow," laughed Stackridge, himself not ill pleased with Pomp's
arguments, "what do you say to that?"
"Wal," said Deslow, "I never thought on't in just that light before; and
I own he makes out a pooty good show of a case. But yet--" He hesitated,
scratching for an idea among the stiff black hair that grew on his low,
wrinkled forehead.
"But yet, but yet, but yet!" said Pomp, ironically. "It's so hard, when
our selfish interests are at stake, to confess our injustice or give up
a bad cause! But I did not come here to argue my right to my own
manhood. I take it without arguing. Neither did I come to ask anything
for myself. You can do nothing for me but get me into trouble. Yet I
believe in the cause in which you have taken up arms. I have served you
this morning without being asked by you to do it; and I may assist you
again when the time comes. In the mean while, if you want anything that
I have, it is yours; for I recognize that we are brothers, though you do
not. But I will not join you, for I am neither slave nor inferior, and I
have no wish to be acknowledged an equal." And Pomp stepped off the rock
with an air that seemed to say, "_I_ know who is the equal of the best
of you; and that is enough." If this man had any fault more prominent
than another, it was pride; yet that haughty self-assertion which would
have been offensive in a white man, was vastly becoming to the haughty
and powerful black.
"I, for one," said the impulsive Stackridge, again grasping his hand,
"honor the position you take. What I wanted was to thank you for what
you have done, and to promise that you are safe from danger as far as
regards us. I'm glad you've got your liberty. I hope you will keep it.
You deserve it. Every slave deserves the same that has the manliness to
strike a blow for the good old government----"
"That has kept him a slave," added Pomp, with a bitter smile.
"Yes; and so much the more noble in him to fight for it!" said
Stackridge. "Now, if you don't want to let us into the secrets of your
way of life, I can't say I blame ye. We're glad to get the coffee; and
if you've any game or potatoes on hand, that you can spare, we'll take
'em, and pay ye when we have a chance to forage for ourselves, which
won't be long first."
"I have some salted bear's meat that you'll be welcome to; and may be
Cudjo can spare a little meal." His eye rested on Carl, whose fidelity
he knew. "Let that boy come with us! We will send the provisions by
him."
Carl was delighted with the honor, for Penn was likewise going back to
Mr. Villars with the negro.