The man traveling through the Louisiana swamps is often appalled by the
deathlike stillness of the woods.
Slimy creatures crawl in the muck under his feet without a croak or
hiss. Gaudy birds fly from living trees to dead, gaunt stumps without a
note of music. The fox and wolf which sometimes make the woods vocal
with their barking, slink away at the approach of man in silence. The
whole place seems to be engaged in the deepest conspiracy to accomplish
something which the slightest sound would disturb or frustrate.
Generally, a negro walking through the woods alone will bawl a song at
the top of his voice. For some reason he feels that there is safety in
sound, just as the Chinaman beats a tin pan to chase the devil away. But
no negro ever has the courage to shatter one of these conspiracies of
silence when he finds it in the swamp. If everything else begins to make
a racket, he will, too. But he won’t start anything.
Which accounts for the fact that two negroes, not two hundred yards
apart, were walking through the Little Moccasin Swamp, and were unaware
of each other’s presence.
One negro was troubled. He stopped, removed his high silk hat, and
mopped the sweat from the top of his bald head. He lowered his head and
listened, then he raised his head and listened. For a moment he thought
he heard something, then he found the silence more intense than ever.
“Dar’s somepin gittin’ ready to happen aroun’ dis woods,” he whispered
to himself. “I been listenin’ in dese here swamps all my life, but I
ain’t never heard no sound like dat ontil now.”
He squatted behind a stump and peered anxiously about him. Great trees
of the primeval forest reared themselves above him, skirted and frocked
like a Druid priest with the funereal moss. Under the wide-spreading
branches of these trees long corridors ran in every direction like the
floral avenues through some giant hot-house conservatory. Nothing moved,
no sound could be heard under those majestic arches of the forest.
The negro stooped and placed his ear to the ground. He had heard an
express train at a long distance, and the sound he was hearing at
intervals was something like that. But he knew it was twenty miles to
the nearest railroad which carried a train which could travel fast
enough to make a similar sound. He had also heard a wolf-pack coming
through the forest on one occasion, and that _pad-pad-pad_ of their
flying feet was not dissimilar in sound to what he was hearing. He was
also familiar with the herds of wild hogs which infested the Little
Moccasin, and when they were moving rapidly at a long distance the sound
would be like the persistent thrumming he could dimly hear.
“Whutever dat is, ’tain’t hittin’ de groun’ wid its foots,” he announced
to himself, as he glanced up about him with fear-shot eyes. “Dis here
nigger is gittin’ ready to vacate hisself from dis swamp.”
He glanced up at the sky. It was as clear as a soap bubble. The haze of
the evening was settling upon the tree-tops like a vail of purple and
gold under the setting sun. He was looking for the signs of the sudden
storms which blow in from the Gulf, and he sniffed the air for the odor
of smoke from a forest fire.
“’Tain’t no fire, an’ it ain’t no cycaloon storm,” he muttered.
He turned and walked rapidly down the little foot-path, still listening,
but now more interested in getting out of the darkening woods than in
locating the source of the sound. Suddenly he heard the noise so loud
and distinct that his next guess was nearer than he dreamed.
“Dat’s a automobile engyne!” he chattered, the goose-flesh rising all
over his body. Then he shook his head in mute denial of his assertion.
The nearest public highroad was ten miles away.
“Not even a skeart nigger preacher kin hear ten miles,” he muttered.
“An’ nobody but de debbil could run a automobile in dese here woods whar
dar ain’t no road!”
The thought brought him to a quick halt. Suppose the devil were loose in
these woods, riding around in a flivver or straddle of a motor-cycle,
seeking whom he might devour?
“I don’t crave to meet de debbil,” the colored clergyman murmured, as he
reached up for his stove-pipe hat and grasped it firmly in his fingers.
“I done slanderized the debbil too frequent in my sermonts!”
He turned his face until his eyes looked straight into the face of the
setting sun, and he began to leave the scenery of the swamp behind him.
He did not run. No man can run as fast as the Rev. Vinegar Atts was
traveling.
And Vinegar knew where he was going. In the very heart of that Little
Moccasin Swamp was the Moccasin prairie. It was an open space containing
nearly a square mile of ground without a tree or stump. It was
completely surrounded by water, and two years before a raging forest
fire had left it a charred ground strewn with ash and soot. Now it was
covered with grass and was as smooth as a baseball diamond. Vinegar was
including that open space in his route toward Tickfall because he could
travel across it with ease and speed.
Suddenly every winged creature of the swamp broke the silence and became
vocal with screams of fright. Hundreds of wild pigeons rose in the air
and began to describe mad circles over the head of the running negro.
From all the watercourses rose the wild fowls that love the low, damp
marshes, and they sailed upward with hoarse shrieks of fear. The angry,
fighting, bark-like call of the hawks, mingled with the scream of
eagles, and these fearless birds sailed straight into the glowing red
eye of the sun to meet the peril that was coming.
Vinegar Atts could not see because he was blinded by the sun. But soon a
roar sounded above him like the exhaust of an automobile, and Vinegar
looked up.
An airplane was climbing the pathless air in long, spiral flight
directly over his head—the first flying-machine that the Rev. Vinegar
Atts had ever seen. Its long wings were tipped as with fire by the rays
of the setting sun. Beneath it the screaming birds sailed wildly, madly,
performing all sorts of aerial stunts.
Vinegar dropped on his knees, with his arms stretched up toward the
graceful creation of man’s brain and hands. A few phrases from his old,
worn Bible came to his mind, and he bellowed them at the top of his
voice, as he listened to the exhaust of that great motor.
“Like de noise of chariots on de top of mountains, like de noise of a
flame of fire dat devoureth de stubble—all faces shall gather
blackness—dey shall run like mighty men——”
The birds scattered far and wide over the swamp. There was a great
silence. Vinegar opened his eyes, and lo, the airplane was sailing
slowly downward.
“My Gawd!” Vinegar howled. “De chariot of fire!”
Thereupon he fulfilled the prophecy of the Book of Joel, and rose from
the ground and “ran like a mighty man.”
The airplane settled upon the edge of the Moccasin prairie. A young man
dismounted from the machine, glanced at it critically, then took a
survey of the sky with a rather furtive eye, and turned with an air of
decision and disappeared in the swamp.
Then a strange negro stepped to the edge of the clearing, waited until
he was sure that the airman was not going to return, and walked over to
the machine.
“Dat white man is done got enough flyin’ an’ he’s drapped dis car down
here fer good,” he decided. “Dis am four miles from Tickfall, an’ ef dat
white man had wanted to land anywise nigh he could hab done it.”
He stood scratching his head and pondering.
“Naw, suh,” he concluded. “Dat white man is done lost dis here
flyin’-machine. He lost it a puppus. He ain’t never comin’ back fer it.”
Sniffing at the taint of hot oil which spoiled the rich odors of the
woods, the strange negro wandered on toward Tickfall, his nose in the
air.
Incidentally he had some plans in the air.