ENGEDI.
The question may occur to our readers, why a retreat which appeared so
easily accessible to the negroes of the vicinity in which our story is
laid should escape the vigilance of hunters.
In all despotic countries, however, it will be found that the oppressed
party become expert in the means of secrecy. It is also a fact that the
portion of the community who are trained to labor enjoy all that
advantage over the more indolent portion of it which can be given by a
vigorous physical system, and great capabilities of endurance. Without a
doubt, the balance of the physical strength of the south now lies in the
subject race. Usage familiarizes the dwellers of the swamp with the
peculiarities of their location, and gives them the advantage in it that
a mountaineer has in his own mountains. Besides, they who take their
life in their hand exercise their faculties with more vigor and
clearness than they who have only money at stake; and this advantage the
negroes had over the hunters.
Dred's "stronghold of Engedi," as we have said, was isolated from the
rest of the swamp by some twenty yards of deep morass, in which it was
necessary to wade almost to the waist. The shore presented to the eye
only the appearance of an impervious jungle of cat-brier and grapevine
rising out of the water. There was but one spot on which there was a
clear space to set foot on, and that was the place where Dred crept up
on the night when we first introduced the locality to our readers'
attention.
The hunters generally satisfied themselves with exploring more
apparently accessible portions; and, unless betrayed by those to whom
Dred had communicated the clue, there was very little chance that any
accident would ever disclose the retreat.
Dred himself appeared to be gifted with that peculiar faculty of
discernment of spirits which belonged to his father Denmark Vesey,
sharpened into a preternatural intensity by the habits of his wild and
dangerous life. The men he selected for trust were men as impenetrable
as himself, the most vigorous in mind and body on all the plantations.
The perfectness of his own religious enthusiasm, his absolute certainty
that he was inspired of God, as a leader and deliverer, gave him an
ascendency over the minds of those who followed him, which nothing but
religious enthusiasm ever can give. And this was further confirmed by
the rigid austerity of his life. For all animal comforts he appeared to
entertain a profound contempt. He never tasted strong liquors in any
form, and was extremely sparing in his eating; often fasting for days in
succession, particularly when he had any movement of importance in
contemplation.
It is difficult to fathom the dark recesses of a mind so powerful and
active as his, placed under a pressure of ignorance and social
disability so tremendous. In those desolate regions which he made his
habitation, it is said that trees often, from the singularly unnatural
and wildly stimulating properties of the slimy depths from which they
spring, assume a goblin growth, entirely different from their normal
habit. All sorts of vegetable monsters stretch their weird, fantastic
forms among its shadows. There is no principle so awful through all
nature as the principle of _growth_. It is a mysterious and dread
condition of existence, which, place it under what impediment or
disadvantage you will, is constantly forcing on; and when unnatural
pressure hinders it, develops in forms portentous and astonishing. The
wild, dreary belt of swamp-land which girds in those states scathed by
the fires of despotism is an apt emblem, in its rampant and we might say
delirious exuberance of vegetation, of that darkly struggling, wildly
vegetating swamp of human souls, cut off, like it, from the usages and
improvements of cultivated life.
Beneath that fearful pressure, souls whose energy, well-directed, might
have blessed mankind, start out in preternatural and fearful
developments, whose strength is only a portent of dread.
The night after the meeting which we have described was one, to this
singular being, of agonizing conflict. His psychological condition, as
near as we can define it, seemed to be that of a human being who had
been seized and possessed, after the manner related in ancient fables,
by the wrath of an avenging God. That part of the moral constitution,
which exists in some degree in us all, which leads us to feel pain at
the sight of injustice, and to desire retribution for cruelty and crime,
seemed in him to have become an absorbing sentiment, as if he had been
chosen by some higher power as the instrument of doom. At some moments
the idea of the crimes and oppressions which had overwhelmed his race
rolled in upon him with a burning pain, which caused him to cry out,
like the fated and enslaved Cassandra, at the threshold of the dark
house of tyranny and blood.
This sentiment of justice, this agony in view of cruelty and crime, is
in men a strong attribute of the highest natures; for he who is
destitute of the element of moral indignation is effeminate and tame.
But there is in nature and in the human heart a pleading, interceding
element, which comes in constantly to temper and soften this spirit and
this element in the divine mind, which the Scriptures represent by the
sublime image of an eternally interceding high priest, who, having
experienced every temptation of humanity, constantly urges all that can
be thought in mitigation of justice. As a spotless and high-toned mother
bears in her bosom the anguish of the impurity and vileness of her
child, so the eternally suffering, eternally interceding love of Christ
bears the sins of our race. But the Scriptures tell us that the
mysterious _person_, who thus stands before all worlds as the image and
impersonation of divine tenderness, has yet in reserve this awful energy
of wrath. The oppressors, in the last dread day, are represented as
calling to the mountains and rocks to fall on them, and hide them from
the wrath of the LAMB. This idea had dimly loomed up before the mind of
Dred, as he read and pondered the mysteries of the sacred oracles; and
was expressed by him in the form of language so frequent in his mouth,
that "the Lamb was bearing the yoke of the sins of men." He had been
deeply affected by the presentation which Milly had made in their night
meeting of the eternal principle of intercession and atonement. The
sense of it was blindly struggling with the habitual and overmastering
sense of oppression and wrong.
When his associates had all dispersed to their dwellings, he threw
himself on his face, and prayed: "O Lamb of God, that bearest the yoke,
why hast thou filled me with wrath? Behold these graves! Behold the
graves of my brothers, slain without mercy, and, Lord, they do not
repent! Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look
on iniquity. Wherefore lookest thou upon them that deal treacherously,
and holdest thy tongue when the wicked devoureth the man that is more
righteous than he? They make men as fishes in the sea, as creeping
things that have no ruler over them. They take them up with the angle.
They catch them in their net, and gather them in their drag. Therefore
they rejoice and are glad. Therefore they sacrifice unto their net, and
burn incense unto their drag, because by them their portion is fat, and
their meat plenteous. Shall they, therefore, empty their net, and not
spare continually to slay the nations? Did not he that made them in the
womb make us? Did not the same God fashion us in the womb? Doubtless
thou art our Father, though Abraham be ignorant of us, and Israel
acknowledgeth us not. Thou, O God, art our Father, our Redeemer.
Wherefore forgettest thou us for ever, and forsakest us so long a time?
Wilt thou not judge between us and our enemies? Behold, there is none
among them that stirreth himself up to call upon thee, and he that
departeth from evil maketh himself a prey. They lie in wait, they set
traps, they catch men, they are waxen fat, they shine, they overpass the
deeds of the wicked, they judge not the cause of the fatherless; yet
they prosper, and the right of the needy do they not judge. Wilt thou
not visit for these things, O Lord? Shall not thy soul be avenged on
such a nation as this? How long wilt thou endure? Behold under the altar
the souls of those they have slain! They cry unto thee continually. How
long, O Lord, dost thou not judge and avenge? Is there any that stirreth
himself up for justice? Is there any that regardeth our blood? We are
sold for silver; the price of our blood is in thy treasury; the price of
our blood is on thine altars! Behold, they build their churches with the
price of our hire! Behold, the stone doth cry out of the wall, and the
timber doth answer it. Because they build their towns with blood, and
establish their cities by iniquity. They have all gone one way. There is
none that careth for the spoilings of the poor. Art thou a just God?
When wilt thou arise to shake terribly the earth, that the desire of all
nations may come? Overturn, overturn, and overturn, till _he_ whose
right it is shall come!"
Such were the words, not uttered continuously, but poured forth at
intervals, with sobbings, groanings, and moanings, from the recesses of
that wild fortress. It was but a part of that incessant prayer with
which oppressed humanity has besieged the throne of justice in all ages.
We who live in ceiled houses would do well to give heed to that sound,
lest it be to us that inarticulate moaning which goes before the
earthquake. If we would estimate the force of almighty justice, let us
ask ourselves what a mother might feel for the abuse of her helpless
child, and multiply that by infinity.
But the night wore on, and the stars looked down serene and solemn, as
if no prayer had gone through the calm, eternal gloom; and the morning
broke in the east resplendent.
Harry, too, had passed a sleepless night. The death of Hark weighed like
a mountain upon his heart. He had known him for a whole-souled,
true-hearted fellow. He had been his counsellor and friend for many
years, and he had died in silent torture for him. How stinging is it at
such a moment to view the whole respectability of civilized society
upholding and glorifying the murderer; calling his sin by soft names,
and using for his defence every artifice of legal injustice! Some in our
own nation have had bitter occasion to know this, for we have begun to
drink the cup of trembling which for so many ages has been drank alone
by the slave. Let the associates of Brown ask themselves if they cannot
understand the midnight anguish of Harry!
His own impulses would have urged to an immediate insurrection, in which
he was careless about his own life, so the fearful craving of his soul
for justice was assuaged. To him the morning seemed to break red with
the blood of his friend. He would have urged to immediate and
precipitate action. But Dred, true to the enthusiastic impulses which
guided him, persisted in waiting for that sign from Heaven which was to
indicate when the day of grace was closed, and the day of judgment to
begin. This expectation he founded on his own version of certain
passages in the prophets, such as these:--
"I will show wonders in heaven above, and signs in the earth beneath;
blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke! The sun shall be turned into
darkness, and the moon into blood, before that great and notable day of
the Lord shall come!"
Meanwhile, his associates were to be preparing the minds of the people,
and he was traversing the swamps in different directions, holding
nightly meetings, in which he read and expounded the prophecies to
excited ears. The laborious arguments, by which northern and southern
doctors of divinity have deduced from the Old Testament the divine
institution of slavery, were too subtle and fine-spun to reach his ear
amid the denunciations of prophecies, all turning on the sin of
oppression. His instinctive understanding of the spirit of the Bible
justified the sagacity which makes the supporter of slavery, to this
day, careful not to allow the slave the power of judging it for himself;
and we leave it to any modern pro-slavery divine whether, in Dred's
circumstances, his own judgment might not have been the same.
After daylight, Harry saw Dred standing, with a dejected countenance,
outside of his hut.
"I have wrestled," he said, "for thee; but the time is not yet! Let us
abide certain days, for the thing is secret unto me; and I cannot do
less nor more till the Lord giveth commandment. When the Lord delivereth
them into our hands, one shall chase a thousand, and two put ten
thousand to flight!"
"After all," said Harry, "our case is utterly hopeless! A few poor,
outcast wretches, without a place to lay our heads, and they all
revelling in their splendor and their power! Who is there in this great
nation that is not pledged against us? Who would not cry _Amen_, if we
were dragged out and hung like dogs? The north is as bad as the south!
They kill us, and the north consents and justifies! And all their
wealth, power, and religion, are used against us. We are the ones that
all sides are willing to give up. Any party in church or of state will
throw in our blood and bones as a make-weight, and think nothing of it.
And, when I see them riding out in their splendid equipages, their
houses full of everything that is elegant, they so cultivated and
refined, and our people so miserable, poor, and down-trodden, I haven't
any faith that there is a God!"
"Stop!" said Dred, laying his hand on his arm. "Hear what the prophet
saith. 'Their land, also, is full of silver and gold; neither is there
any end of their treasures. Their land, also, is full of horses; neither
is there any end of their chariots. Their land also is full of idols.
They worship the work of their own hands. Enter into the rock, and hide
thee in the dust, for fear of the Lord, and for the glory of his
majesty. The lofty looks of man shall be humbled, and the haughtiness of
man shall be bowed down, and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that
day. For the day of the Lord of Hosts shall be on every one that is
proud and lofty, and upon every one that is lifted up; and he shall be
brought low! And upon all the cedars of Lebanon that are high and lifted
up, and upon all the oaks of Bashan, and upon all the high mountains,
and upon all the hills that are lifted up, and upon every high tower,
and upon every fenced wall, and upon all the ships of Tarshish, and upon
all pleasant pictures! And the loftiness of man shall be bowed down, the
haughtiness of man shall be made low! And they shall go in the holes of
the rocks, and in the caves of the earth, for fear of the Lord, and for
his majesty, when he ariseth to shake terribly the earth!'"
The tall pines, and whispering oaks, as they stood waving in purple
freshness at the dawn, seemed like broad-winged attesting angels,
bearing witness, in their serene and solemn majesty, to the sublime
words, "Heaven and earth shall not pass away till these words have been
fulfilled!"
After a few moments a troubled expression came over the face of Dred.
"Harry," he said, "verily, he is a God that hideth himself! He giveth
none account to any of these matters. It may be that I shall not lead
the tribes over this Jordan; but that I shall lay my bones in the
wilderness! But the day shall surely come, and the sign of the Son of
Man shall appear in the air, and all tribes of the earth shall wail,
because of him! Behold, I saw white spirits and black spirits, that
contended in the air; and the thunder rolled, and the blood flowed, and
the voice said, 'Come rough, come smooth! Such is the decree. Ye must
surely bear it!' But, as yet, the prayers of the saints have power; for
there be angels, having golden censers, which be the prayers of saints.
And the Lord, by reason thereof, delayeth. Behold I have borne the
burden of the Lord even for many years. He hath covered me with a cloud
in the day of his anger, and filled me with his wrath; and his word has
been like a consuming fire shut in my bones! He hath held mine eyes
waking, and my bones have waxed old with my roarings all the day long!
Then I have said, 'Oh, that thou wouldst hide me in the dust! That thou
wouldst keep me secret till thy wrath be past!'"
At this moment, soaring upward through the blue sky, rose the fair form
of a wood-pigeon, wheeling and curving in the morning sunlight, cutting
the ether with airy flight, so smooth, even, and clear, as if it had
learnt motion from the music of angels.
Dred's eye, faded and haggard with his long night-watchings, followed it
for a moment with an air of softened pleasure, in which was blent
somewhat of weariness and longing.
"Oh, that I had wings like a dove!" he said. "Then would I flee away and
be at rest! I would hasten from the windy storm and tempest! Lo, then I
would wander far off, and remain in the wilderness!"
There was something peculiar in the power and energy which this man's
nature had of drawing others into the tide of its own sympathies, as a
strong ship, walking through the water, draws all the smaller craft into
its current.
Harry, melancholy and disheartened as he was, felt himself borne out
with him in that impassioned prayer.
"I know," said Dred, "that the new heavens and the new earth shall come,
and the redeemed of the Lord shall walk in it. But, as for me, I am a
man of unclean lips, and the Lord hath laid on me the oppressions of the
people! But, though the violent man prevail against me, it shall surely
come to pass!"
Harry turned away, and walked slowly to the other side of the clearing,
where Old Tiff, with Fanny, Teddy, and Lisette, having kindled a fire on
the ground, was busy in preparing their breakfast. Dred, instead of
going into his house, disappeared in the thicket. Milly had gone home
with the man who came from Canema. The next day, as Harry and Dred made
a hunting excursion through the swamp, returning home in the edge of the
evening, they happened to be passing near the scene of lawless violence
which we have already described.