LIFE IN THE SWAMPS.
Our readers will perhaps feel an interest to turn back with us, and
follow the singular wanderings of the mysterious personage, whose wild
denunciations had so disturbed the minds of the worshippers at the
camp-meeting.
There is a twilight-ground between the boundaries of the sane and
insane, which the old Greeks and Romans regarded with a peculiar
veneration. They held a person whose faculties were thus darkened as
walking under the awful shadow of a supernatural presence; and, as the
mysterious secrets of the stars only become visible in the night, so in
these eclipses of the more material faculties they held there was often
an awakening of supernatural perceptions.
The hot and positive light of our modern materialism, which exhales from
the growth of our existence every dewdrop, which searches out and dries
every rivulet of romance, which sends an unsparing beam into every cool
grotto of poetic possibility, withering the moss, and turning the
dropping cave to a dusty den--this spirit, so remorseless, allows us no
such indefinite land. There are but two words in the whole department of
modern anthropology--the sane and the insane; the latter dismissed from
human reckoning almost with contempt. We should find it difficult to
give a suitable name to the strange and abnormal condition in which this
singular being, of whom we are speaking, passed the most of his time.
It was a state of exaltation and trance, which yet appeared not at all
to impede the exercise of his outward and physical faculties, but rather
to give them a preternatural keenness and intensity, such as sometimes
attends the more completely-developed phenomena of somnambulism.
In regard to his physical system there was also much that was peculiar.
Our readers may imagine a human body of the largest and keenest vitality
to grow up so completely under the nursing influences of nature, that it
may seem to be as perfectly _en rapport_ with them as a tree; so that
the rain, the wind, and the thunder, all those forces from which human
beings generally seek shelter, seem to hold with it a kind of
fellowship, and to be familiar companions of existence.
Such was the case with Dred. So completely had he come into sympathy and
communion with nature, and with those forms of it which more
particularly surrounded him in the swamps, that he moved about among
them with as much ease as a lady treads her Turkey carpet. What would
seem to us in recital to be incredible hardship, was to him but an
ordinary condition of existence. To walk knee-deep in the spongy soil of
the swamp, to force his way through thickets, to lie all night sinking
in the porous soil, or to crouch, like the alligator, among reeds and
rushes, were to him situations of as much comfort as well-curtained beds
and pillows are to us.
It is not to be denied, that there is in this savage perfection of the
natural organs a keen and almost fierce delight, which must excel the
softest seductions of luxury. Anybody who has ever watched the eager
zest with which the hunting-dog plunges through the woods, darts through
the thicket, or dives into water, in an ecstasy of enjoyment, sees
something of what such vital force must be.
Dred was under the inspiring belief that he was the subject of visions
and supernatural communications. The African race are said by mesmerists
to possess, in the fullest degree, that peculiar temperament which fits
them for the evolution of mesmeric phenomena; and hence the existence
among them, to this day, of men and women who are supposed to have
peculiar magical powers. The grandfather of Dred, on his mother's side,
had been one of these reputed African sorcerers, and he had early
discovered in the boy this peculiar species of temperament. He had
taught him the secret of snake-charming, and had possessed his mind from
childhood with expectations of prophetic and supernatural impulses. That
mysterious and singular gift, whatever it may be, which Highland seers
denominate second sight, is a very common tradition among the negroes;
and there are not wanting thousands of reputed instances among them to
confirm belief in it. What this faculty may be, we shall not pretend to
say. Whether there be in the soul a yet undeveloped attribute, which is
to be to the future what memory is to the past, or whether in some
individuals an extremely high and perfect condition of the sensuous
organization endows them with something of that certainty of instinctive
discrimination which belongs to animals, are things which we shall not
venture to decide upon.
It was, however, an absolute fact with regard to Dred, that he had often
escaped danger by means of a peculiarity of this kind. He had been
warned from particular places where the hunters had lain in wait for
him; had foreseen in times of want where game might be ensnared, and
received intimations where persons were to be found in whom he might
safely confide; and his predictions with regard to persons and things
had often chanced to be so strikingly true, as to invest his sayings
with a singular awe and importance among his associates.
It was a remarkable fact, but one not peculiar to this case alone, that
the mysterious exaltation of mind in this individual seemed to run
parallel with the current of shrewd, practical sense; and, like a man
who converses alternately in two languages, he would speak now the
language of exaltation, and now that of common life, interchangeably.
This peculiarity imparted a singular and grotesque effect to his whole
personality.
On the night of the camp-meeting, he was as we have already seen, in a
state of the highest ecstasy. The wanton murder of his associate seemed
to flood his soul with an awful tide of emotion, as a thunder-cloud is
filled and shaken by slow-gathering electricity. And, although the
distance from his retreat to the camp-ground was nearly fifteen miles,
most of it through what seemed to be impassable swamps, yet he performed
it with as little consciousness of fatigue as if he had been a spirit.
Even had he been perceived at that time, it is probable that he could no
more have been taken, or bound, than the demoniac of Gadara.
After he parted from Harry he pursued his way to the interior of the
swamp, as was his usual habit, repeating to himself, in a chanting
voice, such words of prophetic writ as were familiar to him.
The day had been sultry, and it was now an hour or two past midnight,
when a thunder-storm, which had long been gathering and muttering in the
distant sky, began to develop its forces.
A low, shivering sigh crept through the woods, and swayed in weird
whistlings the tops of the pines; and sharp arrows of lightning came
glittering down among the darkness of the branches, as if sent from the
bow of some warlike angel. An army of heavy clouds swept in a moment
across the moon; then came a broad, dazzling, blinding sheet of flame,
concentrating itself on the top of a tall pine near where Dred was
standing, and in a moment shivered all its branches to the ground, as a
child strips the leaves from a twig. Dred clapped his hands with a
fierce delight; and, while the rain and wind were howling and hissing
around him, he shouted aloud:--
"Wake, O arm of the Lord! Awake, put on thy strength! The voice of the
Lord breaketh the cedars--yea, the cedars of Lebanon! The voice of the
Lord divideth the flames of fire! The voice of the Lord shaketh the
wilderness of Kadesh! Hailstones and coals of fire!"
The storm, which howled around him, bent the forest like a reed, and
large trees, uprooted from the spongy and tremulous soil, fell crashing
with a tremendous noise; but, as if he had been a dark spirit of the
tempest, he shouted and exulted.
The perception of such awful power seemed to animate him, and yet to
excite in his soul an impatience that He whose power was so infinite did
not awake to judgment.
"Rend the heavens," he cried, "and come down! Avenge the innocent blood!
Cast forth thine arrows, and slay them! Shoot out thy lightnings, and
destroy them!"
His soul seemed to kindle with almost a fierce impatience, at the
toleration of that Almighty Being, who, having the power to blast and to
burn, so silently endures. Could Dred have possessed himself of those
lightnings, what would have stood before him? But his cry, like the cry
of thousands, only went up to stand in waiting till an awful coming day!
Gradually the storm passed by; the big drops dashed less and less
frequently; a softer breeze passed through the forest, with a patter
like the clapping of a thousand little wings; and the moon occasionally
looked over the silvery battlements of the great clouds.
As Dred was starting to go forward, one of these clear revealings showed
him the cowering form of a man, crouched at the root of a tree, a few
paces in front of him. He was evidently a fugitive, and, in fact, was
the one of whose escape to the swamps the Georgia trader had complained
of the day of of the meeting.
"Who is here, at this time of night?" said Dred, coming up to him.
"I have lost my way," said the other. "I don't know where I am!"
"A runaway?" inquired Dred.
"Don't betray me!" said the other, apprehensively.
"Betray you! Would _I_ do that?" said Dred. "How did you get into the
swamp?"
"I got away from a soul-driver's camp, that was taking us on through the
states."
"Oh, oh!" said Dred. "Camp-meeting and driver's camp right alongside of
each other! Shepherds that sell the flock, and pick the bones! Well,
come, old man; I'll take you home with me."
"I'm pretty much beat out," said the man. "It's been up over my knees
every step; and I didn't know but they'd set the dogs after me. If they
do, I'll let 'em kill me, and done with it, for I'm 'bout ready to have
it over with. I got free once, and got clear up to New York, and got me
a little bit of a house, and a wife and two children, with a little
money beforehand; and then they nabbed me, and sent me back again, and
mas'r sold me to the drivers,--and I believe I's 'bout as good 's die.
There's no use in trying to live--everything going agin a body so!"
"Die! No, indeed, you won't," said Dred; "not if I've got hold of you!
Take heart, man, take heart! Before morning I'll put you where the dogs
can't find you, nor anything else. Come, up with you!"
The man rose up, and made an effort to follow; but, wearied, and unused
as he was to the choked and perplexed way, he stumbled and fell almost
every minute.
"How now, brother?" said Dred. "This won't do! I must put you over my
shoulder as I have many a buck before now!" And, suiting the action to
the word, he put the man on his back, and, bidding him hold fast to him,
went on, picking his way as if he scarcely perceived his weight.
It was now between two and three o'clock, and the clouds, gradually
dispersing, allowed the full light of the moon to slide down here and
there through the wet and shivering foliage. No sound was heard, save
the humming of insects and the crackling plunges by which Dred made his
way forward.
"You must be pretty strong!" said his companion. "Have you been in the
swamps long?"
"Yes," said the other, "I have been a wild man--every man's hand against
me--a companion of the dragons and the owls, this many a year. I have
made my bed with the leviathan, among the reeds and the rushes. I have
found the alligators and the snakes better neighbors than Christians.
They let those alone that let them alone; but Christians will hunt for
the precious life."
After about an hour of steady travelling, Dred arrived at the outskirts
of the island which we have described. For about twenty paces before he
reached it, he waded waist-deep in water. Creeping out, at last, and
telling the other one to follow him, he began carefully coursing along
on his hands and knees, giving, at the same time, a long, shrill,
peculiar whistle. It was responded to by a similar sound, which seemed
to proceed through the bushes. After a while, a crackling noise was
heard, as of some animal, which gradually seemed to come nearer and
nearer to them, till finally a large water-dog emerged from the
underbrush, and began testifying his joy at the arrival of the
new-comer, by most extravagant gambols.
"So, ho! Buck! quiet, my boy!" said Dred. "Show us the way in!"
The dog, as if understanding the words, immediately turned into the
thicket, and Dred and his companion followed him, on their hands and
knees. The path wound up and down the brushwood, through many sharp
turnings, till at last it ceased altogether, at the roots of a tree;
and, while the dog disappeared among the brushwood, Dred climbed the
tree, and directed his companion to follow him, and, proceeding out on
to one of the longest limbs, he sprang nimbly on to the ground in the
cleared space which we have before described.
His wife was standing waiting for him, and threw herself upon him with a
cry of joy.
"Oh, you've come back! I thought, sure enough, dey'd got you dis time!"
"Not yet! I must continue till the opening of the seals--till the vision
cometh! Have ye buried him?"
"No; there's a grave dug down yonder, and he's been carried there."
"Come, then!" said Dred.
At a distant part of the clearing was a blasted cedar-tree, all whose
natural foliage had perished. But it was veiled from head to foot in
long wreaths of the tillandsia, the parasitic moss of these regions,
and, in the dim light of the approaching dawn, might have formed no
unapt resemblance to a gigantic spectre dressed in mourning weeds.
Beneath this tree Dred had interred, from time to time, the bodies of
fugitives which he had found dead in the swamps, attaching to this
disposition of them some peculiar superstitious idea.
The widow of the dead, the wife of Dred, and the new-comer, were now
gathered around the shallow grave; for the soil was such as scarcely
gave room to make a place deep enough for a grave without its becoming
filled with water.
The dawn was just commencing a dim foreshadowing in the sky. The moon
and stars were still shining.
Dred stood and looked up, and spoke, in a solemn voice.
"Seek him that maketh Arcturus and Orion--that turneth the shadow of
death into morning! Behold those lights in the sky--the lights in his
hands pierced for the sins of the world, and spread forth as on a cross!
But the day shall come that he shall lay down the yoke, and he will bear
the sin of the world no longer. Then shall come the great judgment. He
will lay righteousness to the line and judgment to the plummet, and the
hail shall sweep away the refuges of lies."
He stooped, and, lifting the body, laid him in the grave, and at this
moment the wife broke into a loud lament.
"Hush, woman!" said Dred, raising his hand. "Weep ye not for the dead,
neither bewail him; but weep ye sore for the living! He must rest till
the rest of his brethren be killed; for the vision is sealed up for an
appointed time. If it tarry, wait for it. It shall surely come, and
shall not tarry!"