JAMES--CONCLUSION.
|We left the railroad behind us and took that northern highway. It was
still early in the night when we passed a big plantation. There was a
white house hack from the road, with pillars and lighted windows. We
had slipped aside, hearing the sound of a galloping horse. It came
up swiftly from the south, a white horse or light grey, and the rider
turned him in at the wide gate into the shadows of the driveway. Then
the front door went open: there were women's voices, and the cries of
laughter, of children; the man ran up the steps, and the light from the
hall shone on his grey uniform and braided bat; the door closed, and we
plodded on in the dark.
Beyond were cabins scattered in the fields, and presently a wood, and
a little peak-roofed building close by the road, lighted and noisy with
singing; and we slipped aside again, avoiding the light. It was a negro
service. We could see the crowded black heads through the windows, and
even hear the words of the hymn, following a queer, plaintive tune. The
preacher on the platform shouted and swung his arms:
"Oh, don' you heah the trumpet blow?
Lulah! Lulah!
Don' you heah the trumpet blow?
All the mountains fall."
“Notheh!” cried the preacher. “Thank God foh' notheh! Don' drap 'im!”
"Someone meet me in the dark--
Lulah! Lulah!
Someone meet me in the dark,
Lif' me when I fall."
And we plodded on “in the dark.” The wood gave way to open flat fields,
and glimmering sky, where the Dipper hung, with its pointers signaling
the pole star.
“Looks like we're most out of it, Bennie,” said Calhoun; “but you can't
tell. I'm not figuring so much as I was.”
“Why not?''
“Well, it's this way. Why, look at it! I figured the thing out, but it
was you that flopped the ship around, and nothing in it but trouble for
you. You had no use for it. And what made the old lady pull Tommy Todd
off us? Not me. I didn't count on her at all. Then I figured us into
the hold of Tommy Todd's canal boat in a bad way, and it was you
bumped heads with Turpentine and fired Tommy Todd's bedding, sort of
off-hand-how-d'ye-do; and I'd been figuring all day, like _x_ plus _y_.
Shucks! Flip a cent. Hear those niggers singing?”
“What did it mean, 'Meet me in the dark, Lift me when I fall,' and all
that?”
“Don't know. Means you might quit figuring. It's too dark, this world,
too dark.”
I said, “That other man was glad to get home,” and Calhoun was silent.
He seemed to be low in his mind.
It was a half-hour later that we heard again the galloping of a horse
behind us. It came up and passed where we hid; it was the white horse
or light grey; but if the rider had seen us and wished to see more, he
misjudged his distance badly. He stopped far beyond, rode through the
low bushes to the fence and looked over; then rode to and fro, peering
about him, I suppose, for the light was not enough to be sure. But we
heard the trampling of his horse too clearly, and he came as near as
fifty feet; finally he turned into the road and went northward at a
gallop.
We saw no one any more, and all along the way the cabins and
dwelling-houses were dark. It might have been three o'clock when we came
upon a broad river or inlet, which the road followed closely from there
on, circling around to the east along a bushy and swampy shore. Houses
were frequent, piers running into the river, rowboats drawn among the
reeds, sailboats anchored, piles of oyster shells, and the smell of the
oyster trade everywhere. Calhoun thought the river should be the west
branch of the Elizabeth River, and that Portsmouth and Norfolk should
lie to the east a few miles. At last the opposite shore was quite lost,
for we were come to the open tideway of the Elizabeth River, and there,
somewhere across the water and through the dimness, lay the James and
the northern ships.
The morning was breaking now, with a thick mist on the river. Between
the road and shore was a broad space of reeds and thick tangled
undergrowth. A path led through it from the pier where the boats lay,
and across the road to a large house, rather new and flimsy-looking,
with long piazzas, and a sign, which I have heard read at that time,
“Smith's Hotel,” but we did not go near enough to read it.
We went down the path to the boats, and thought out which to take when
the time came, and found the place where the oars were thrust among the
reeds, for a poor attempt to hide them, if that were meant. One of the
boats was covered on the bottom with oysters in their knotted shells.
We were glad enough of that, and carried maybe half a bushel into the
thicket, and fell to breakfasting on them, feeling more cheerful, though
raw oysters in a damp thicket of a misty morning are no luxury.
I woke from a sleep, that I thought had been short and surely was
uncomfortable, to hear a voice shouting from the path to someone down by
the pier.
“Hey, landlo'd!” it said. “Can I put up a bill on your post?” and I
thought it was familiar, but could not place it. Calhoun was motioning
me to lie still. The steps of several men crunched the sand on the
beach, and the speaker went to meet them. The “landlo'd” seemed to be
deaf, and spoke very loudly himself.
“Wha'd you say? What you got there?”
They probably stood in a group at the end of the path, and the first
speaker read his “bill” aloud, the others perhaps reading too, for I
caught only certain words: “Reward--forty years--slim, lively--boy--well
grown--Redwood, South Ca'lina”; and then it came upon me that he was
reading a placard and description of Calhoun and me, and that himself
was no other than Gerry, the steersman. That was unpleasant, but I
wished he would read the description more clearly and read it all.
“Well, now,” said the landlord, “tha's a circumstance, ain't it?”
He seemed to be appealing to the others about him, for there was a
murmur which amounted to agreement that it was a circumstance. “Why, I'm
reckonin' you're near the right track. Eh? Why, Major Sandfo'd--You know
him?”
“Ho.”
“Eh? Where'd you come from? Major Sandfo'd, Sandfo'd Plantation. He
rode th'ough here las 'night; said your men came up by the canal an' got
loose below his place somewhere an' mos' bu'nt up the canal boat. Eh?
He said he thought he saw someone on the road, but mought a' been wrong,
'cause he met his niggers comin' f'om their-meetin', an' they tol' him
nobody had passed. Niggers mought lie. Eh? But he didn' find 'em, if he
saw 'em. But they came by the canal. Major said so. Don' you know him?”
They all went up the path together making various comments, but the last
I heard of Gerry's voice was when he said:
“Fetches us inside ten miles, don' it? Might a took the fork to
Po'tsmouth. But you better watch your boats, landlo'd.”
Someone else said:
“Hot work down the river,” meaning the cannonading.
The cannonading kept up its beat and thrill all through the afternoon.
It was the 8th of March. We did not know anything peculiar about the 8th
of March. There was an iron-sided thing careering around the James River
the while, and eating up tall ships, and feeling much too comfortable
over it. We were thinking about Gerry, and the landlord, and the boats.
Towards dusk someone came stamping and puffing in the bushes, and we
made out that he was come to hide the oars back among the brakes and
leaves. We argued it must be the landlord, who seemed to be fat and
short of wind, as well as deaf.
We waited again a long time. Calhoun rose once and peered about, but
lay down again and said there was still a light at the hotel. At last
everything was dark and silent, so far as we could make out.
We crept along till we found the oars, thrust here and there among the
brakes, and took four of them, and so out into the starlight on the
beach. I stepped into a boat, and Calhoun shoved the prow. But we had
surely made a noise--some unnoticed clatter of oars--for the feet of men
were coming now, thumping and stamping down the path. Calhoun shoved
and leaped in, and we shot out over the shallow. But one of the men
ran across the strip of beach into the water and caught the prow; and
Calhoun thrust with his oar handle, so that he fell over and made a
splash; and we got the oars in and rowed away.
They were the landlord and two other men. The two others fell to
shouting in the landlord's ear, “Oars! oars!” and all three ran into the
bushes. We had gotten away so far that the shore was too dim to see, but
I thought they had given up. Calhoun listened and heard their oarlocks.
So we fell to, and pulled till my ears sang and my arms felt wooden,
north by west, down the river, which was there broad like a bay; and we
kept this pace some two miles, and were near the island they call Craney
Island, where were Confederate batteries.
They were good watermen. They out-rowed us fairly, drew nearer and
nearer till I could see that there were two in the stem with an oar
apiece, and the third man pulling two oars.
“They've got no guns,” said Calhoun. “They'd have drawn on us.”
But I only gasped and grunted for answer. Calhoun stopped rowing.
“Will you fight, Bennie?”
There was almost a laugh in his voice, as if he were happy, like a
little boy thinking of a fine new game. And somehow I was glad too, and
cried, “Yes!” feeling I would rather fight the Confederate batteries
than pull through another half-hour so desperately.
“Turn out in the river then. Let's have room.”
And so, when they caught us, we were near the middle of the river and
far away from either shore.
“Hoi!” said the one in the prow.
“Ye would, would ye!”
He leaned over to catch the stern of our boat. I stood up and swung my
oar behind.
“Go easy, sonny,” said one of those in the stem. “You're wo'th money,
wo'th money. Look out there!”
I brought the oar down with a flat slap on the first man's head, who
pitched into the water, hitting our boat with his shoulder. And Calhoun
pulled hard and sudden, so that I fell forward across my oar, and
scrambled up very bewildered.
The other boat had swung around with the shove of the man who went over,
for he came up away from it. Either he could not swim or had lost his
head with the blow, for he cried out and sank again: and one from the
stem, but not the landlord, dove in, while the landlord howled words at
us that had no sense except to express anger, which they did very well.
We pulled away. I seemed to make out from the sounds that they were
lifting the half-drowned man aboard, but we saw no more of them. Someone
on Craney Island fired his gun off. It sounded very sharp and near.
There was a light-boat ahead, marking the channel, and someone there
who shouted; but we turned aside, and went far over to the right till
we touched the reeds along the eastern shore, and so came out into the
James.
There followed a silent, dogged, weary space of time--of rowing and
resting, and rowing again--dark water slapping the boat sides, and the
same thing on and on.
The moon rose late, and when there should have been dawn, came a mist
instead, which was worse than the night, for now we might row past the
ships and not see them, whereas in the dark we should have seen the
lights.
We came suddenly close to a tall ship: the watch heard us first, and
called “Ahoy!” a voice dropping down from overhead in the white mist.
“Is this the _Saratoga?_”
A lantern came down on a rope and stopped over us, and heads were thrust
out over the rail. They seemed to be satisfied we were not dangerous;
I think we did not look so, only two men in a small rowboat, with faces
white and weary, who spoke in thin voices. I thought my voice sounded
queer and dreary.
“Is this the Saratoga?”
“Who are you?”
“Escaped from the south.”
“You don't say!” The heads consulted.
“Is this the _Saratoga?_”
“What? The Saratoga lies two hundred yards astern of us.”
“Captain Benson?”
“What? Aye, Cap'n Benson.” lanterns traveled and gathered to the stern
of the ship to watch us move away. They looked like a cluster of dim
stars in the mist.
“Ahoy!” the voice cried after us, and we stopped rowing. “Are you Ben
Cree?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I'll be dished!”
And here is evidently where this story ends, since it is not a
biography; for a story should know its own right beginning and end, just
as a biography should not maunder over neighboring generations. The rest
is only coming aboard the _Saratoga_--where I had a dim, weary notion
of familiar faces, and went to sleep in a bunk, and woke to see Uncle
Benson standing over me, very prim and natty. “Well, Bennie!” he said,
“it seems to me you've been out pretty late nights.” And I had slept
near a dozen hours, while the _Monitor_ and the _Merrimac_ were
rubbing the muzzles of their cannon together, in plain sight from the
_Saratoga's_ deck, making a mess of naval warfare.
Calhoun afterwards went off and enlisted, and fell in some Western
fighting. Cavarly I have seen since, indeed not so long ago, and shaken
hands with quite friendly, and Ben Cree has worn a captain's title these
years and has wondered whether he ever deserved it.
For while a man is in the thick of his life he speculates little; he
fights, he stays quiet, he runs, as seems best to his sense and suited
to his feelings or the way he has been trained; he has few opinions on
the subject, and those only fitting each event. Everything about him
seems at that time but a stage, where he plays his part hastily and
quite absorbed.
But afterwards he would like to think he has played his part well,
and he hardly knows. Sometimes there is a bit of handclapping here and
there, but the Author and Master of the play says nothing till it is all
over and the curtain has fallen.
“Some folks,” Calhoun used to say, “want to know everything before
they've done anything. Why, Bennie, you don't know two and two make four
till you've put 'em together. Why? Because they _don't_ make four till
you've put 'em together.”
“But you know they _will_ make four,” I would answer for the argument.
“Well,” he would say, “I've known a two and two that was as good as a
dozen. And I've known another two and two that was worse than nothing.”
That was an odd man whom I never understood.
But I think if I were to choose one man to go with into the wilderness,
it would be Calhoun and no other; and I suppose that is one kind of
friendship, as the old poets declare. For the matter of knowing and
doing, it is good arithmetic for a man to know how to put two and two
together so as to make whatever he needs. That is Ben Cree's saying,
the sense of which he learned from one Sabre Calhoun, when they lay out
nights on sand or in undergrowth and watched the pole star hopefully.