About half an hour had passed, during which I had walked up and down,
exchanging a few words, from time to time, with different gentlemen in
the street, when I saw a negro-lad coming at a quick pace from the
side of the bridge. I thought I recollected his face, though I have
always found it very difficult to distinguish one of his race from
another, by the features, when there is no mixture of the white. I
accordingly advanced to meet him, and saw at once that it was of me he
was in search.
"Come along as quick as possible, mas'r," he said, "you is wanted down
dar very much. Mas'r sheriff gone down; but you wanted too. I met
mas'r sheriff on the road. Poor Hercules and two other is shot. Dey
tink him die, and he want to see you."
"Shot!" I exclaimed. "Good Heaven! by whom?"
The boy had been speaking low; but he now dropped his voice to a
whisper, while he replied--
"Mas'r William Thornton, and his son Bob, and dat Irish driver."
I paused to ask no further questions; but called to Zed to bring out
the horses as fast as possible, which he did with more than his usual
alacrity. My own beast still looked very tired, and stood with his
head drooping. I determined therefore to take the horse that Zed
usually rode, and to go alone, although my good servant, who always
had a sort of protecting air with him, as if he thought that, as a
white man and an Englishman, I was not at all fit to take care of
myself in Virginia, urged me strongly to take him with me.
I rode away without him, however; proceeding slowly, till I was beyond
the town, with the negro-lad walking by my side. But we had hardly
passed the bridge when he said,--
"You know de way, don't you, mas'r?" I nodded my head, and he
added--"You had better get on den, fear poor Ercles die first. Dis
nigger come after."
I marked the road too well to miss it; and putting my horse into as
quick a pace as possible, I hurried forward till I reached the turning
which went down by the sheriff's plantations.
Rapid riding is rather favourable to rapid thought; but I had very few
data on which to base conclusions in the present case. This event,
which the boy had communicated to me, was evidently the outrage to
which General Eppes had alluded shortly before; but I puzzled myself
in vain to assign some motive for such an act on the part of Robert
Thornton. Could it be mere malice because the slaves had been taken
out of his hands; I could not believe in such brutality. Yet what
other inducement could he have? It was all in vain; and, turning
through the woods, I was soon near the sheriff's house.
I found no one there, however, except some women and children, who
told me that their master had gone down to the old quarters. One woman
was crying bitterly, and I asked her if poor Hercules was dead. She
said she believed not; but every one said he would die.
No further information could I get; for the poor creatures seemed
ignorant of everything except that some of their friends, perhaps
relations, had been dangerously hurt.
On I went then as fast as possible, till I reached the group of cabins
which I have before described. Round the door of one of them the
greater part of the negroes seemed to have collected; and thither I
rode, judging at once that the wounded man lay there. A boy sprang,
forward to hold my horse. Another whispered as I dismounted,--
"Doctor's wid him, sir."
But I went in notwithstanding; and there, upon the lowly, pallet-bed,
saw extended the large frame of the negro I had beheld in the morning,
full of life and energy, but now apparently reduced to almost infant
weakness. Bending over him with what I suppose was a pair of forceps
plunged into a wound in his right side, was Doctor Christy, the
surgeon who had attended me when suffering from a much lighter wound.
The poor negro's eyes were closed, and he did not open them till the
ball was extracted; but when he did, and they fell upon me, he raised
himself a little on his elbow, as if about to speak.
"There! lie still, my good fellow, lie still," said the surgeon. "We
have got the bullet out; keep quiet and all will go well."
"I want to speak with that gentleman--I _must_ speak with him, though
I die. I'se going to die anyhow, I know dat, and I will speak with him
when I can."
"I hope he is likely to recover, Mr. Christy," I said advancing.
"I hope so," answered the surgeon, in a somewhat doubtful tone. "But
he must keep quiet, and not speak much; for I am not sure that the
lower edge of the lung has not been touched."
While he spoke, he was busily engaged in putting on compresses and
bandages; but the negro eagerly beckoned me towards him, and judging
that he would not remain quiet till he had said what he wished to say,
I walked up and bent down my head, telling him to speak slowly and
calmly.
"Miss Bessy was dere, I'se sure," said the poor man. "Bob Thornton
never shoot us for asking after her, if she warn't. She mayn't be dere
now, for I dar say he send her away, 'case she saw all he do."
"Then was it Robert Thornton himself who shot you?" I asked. "I
thought he was still too ill to move."
"Ay, but he shot me himself," said the negro. "He came to de window in
his dressing-gown, and leaned de gun on de chair. Ole Bill and de two
Irishmen shot de others; but _he_ shot me. But hark'ee, mas'r, if you
and sheriff don't find Miss Bessy, go right across de Swamp. He got de
ole house dere--right across, mind, straight east. You find her dere,
I tink. Dat's anoder State. He won't keep her in Virginny after what
he hab done."
"I cannot really let this go on," said Doctor Christy. "The poor man's
life depends upon his being quiet."
"Well, good-bye, Hercules," I said. "I will see you tomorrow."
"Ah, you bring me word dat Miss Bessy found all safe," answered the
wounded man. "Dat do me more good nor anything."
I drew the surgeon towards the door, round which the other negroes had
remained all the time in perfect silence, and asked him in a low tone
if it would not be better to have the man's deposition taken down, as
he evidently believed himself to be dying.
"What's the use of his deposition?" asked the surgeon drily. "Don't
you know a negro can't testify against a white man? His voice will be
quite as powerful in the grave as when he is living. But I think he
will do well. These negroes always think they will die when anything
is the matter."
No good could be done by staying; and deeper interest called me away.
"Can any of you show me the way to Mr. William Thornton's house?" I
asked, speaking generally to the little crowd without.
"Here's de nigger who can," said an active young negro springing
forward. "We'll soon catch up de sheriff. He not long gone. I can run
all de way. I wish I hab a gun," he continued, looking at the one
which was strapped across my shoulders. "I shoot Bob Thornton wid all
my heart."
"Well, come along," I said, with feelings too much akin to his own to
reprove him for his sanguinary wishes. "Take the shortest way, and
never mind wide paths or narrow; we'll force our way through."
On he bounded like a deer, without care of brambles or thorns, of
rough places or swamps; and, to say truth, though he was on foot, and
I was on horseback, I had a good deal of difficulty to keep up with
him.
The way was rather long; and the by-paths he took did not strike a
wider road, for at least five miles; but when we had gained the more
open way, we almost immediately found ourselves in the presence of the
sheriff, with a considerable party of white men, and two or three
blacks. Amongst the rest, I instantly recognized Robert Thornton, very
pale, but apparently quite convalescent. There was an elder man, whom
I took to be his father, from the strong personal resemblance, though
the latter was thin, fox-faced, and eager-looking, with that peculiar,
quick, and hungry aspect which I have never seen except in men who
have spent a life and employed all their energies in a fruitless
pursuit of wealth by cunning and dirty means--a look of shrewd
activity, rendered almost fierce by disappointment. Behind, with
handcuffs on them, were the two Irishmen whom I remembered well to
have seen with Robert Thornton when he was attempting to carry off
aunt Bab's servants. The rest were men whom I did not know.
The moment the sheriff perceived me, he drew up his horse, and said,--
"I am sorry to tell you, Sir Richard, Miss Davenport is certainly not
there, although we had every reason to believe that she was. I had
not, indeed, time to pursue my inquiries as far as I could wish; for
my other duties call me to Jerusalem as fast as possible. But I
searched every room and every cabin round the house; and, whether she
has been there or not, she is not there now."
"You will take notice, Mr. Sheriff," cried Robert Thornton, before I
could say anything in reply, "that I again protest against this
proceeding as altogether illegal and unwarranted; and I give you
notice, I shall undoubtedly bring an action against you for false
imprisonment, which you know quite well will lie."
"You will do as you are advised, Mr. Thornton," replied the sheriff,
coolly. "The district is in an exceptional state just now, and the
presumptions are very strong against you. But, as I said before, my
mind is perfectly made up as to my course. You have not often known me
abandon my determinations; and I shall not suffer any of you four
gentlemen to depart till you have given sufficient bail to meet any
charge which may be preferred against you."
"Why, you have not even a pretence, sir," said the elder Mr. Thornton.
"Nothing but the idle tattle of a parcel of niggers."
The sheriff smiled sarcastically.
"You forget," he said, "we may yet have some curious testimony from
Colonel Halliday, and various gentlemen of his party; and, moreover,"
he continued, more slowly and emphatically, "some testimony, which,
though it is not present, and may not even be in this State at the
present moment, may become available hereafter. At all events, I will
take my chance of what is upon the cards, and please God, I will carry
you to Jerusalem this night."
I could see that the countenances of Robert Thornton and his father
both fell considerably at some parts of the sheriff's reply, which
they understood better than I did, and they did not attempt to make
any further opposition.
"Sir Richard," said the sheriff, beckoning me a little aside, "you had
better return with us. You will not find the lady there; and, without
guides and some force, I don't think you will be able to do anything
to-night."
"I will go on at all events," I answered. "I have got some hints from
that poor fellow whom they have wounded, which I want to follow up at
once. I shall probably be back to-night, or at latest, to-morrow."
"Well take care what you do," he replied. "Remember you are not in
your own country. But I shall be round in the direction which I
suppose you are taking early to-morrow; and, if there should be any
difficulty, may be able to give you assistance, though I think this
man's creatures will be completely cowed when they find he is
apprehended. Indeed, that Irishman there on the left, is going to turn
State's evidence, or I am very much mistaken. I would go with you; but
I have a great deal to do to-night. Mind what you do in the Swamp; for
people have got in there who have never got out again. Now, gentlemen,
we will go forward, if you please. Mr. Thornton, you will have the
goodness to cease your communications with that man. I wish him to
give his evidence unprompted; and as it is a matter which may affect
his own life and the lives of two or three others, he had better be
permitted to speak freely. I suppose you are aware this district is
under martial law at present."
"Then your functions are suspended," said Robert Thornton, sharply.
"Excuse me, sir," said the sheriff. "I am acting under due authority;
and, at all events, might makes right in the present instance, as you
will find."
Thus saying, he rode on; and as Robert Thornton passed me, though his
tongue said nothing, his look said a great deal. Poor Hercules had
told me to go straight east across the Swamp, if I did not find dear
Bessy at Mr. William Thornton's house; and the sheriff assured me she
was not there: so that I was inclined at first to leave the house,
which was now in sight on my right, along a path which seemed long
beaten.
On second thought, however, I determined to go up to the house and
make further inquiries; not that I doubted the sheriff, or had the
vanity to attribute to myself superior acumen; but I have often
remarked that where one man of intelligence has been unable to obtain
information, or get a clue to some secret, a second man, perhaps
inferior to himself, will stumble, by accident, upon the very thing
that is wanted. In fact, there are two sides to every hedge; one man
takes one, and another man takes the other; and where the form is,
there the hare will be.
At the door of Mr. Thornton's house, stood two or three negro women
and one man. Springing from my horse without hesitation, I gave the
rein to my companion, and walked up to them in a familiar manner. They
seemed a dull, sullen, heavy set of people, indeed the lowest
specimens of the negro race I had yet met with. Yet the conduct and
the character of the master must have been that which had brutalized
them, for they were exactly of the same race as all the rest round
about; and, indeed, most of them seemed to have some portion of white
blood in their veins.
"How long is it since Miss Davenport went?" I said, taking out my
watch.
"I don't know anything about her," answered the man, in a surly tone.
"I didn't ask you, my good friend," I said; "I asked the woman who
attended upon her. You were the girl," I continued, picking out a
young woman of two-and-twenty, who looked cleaner, and was more neatly
dressed than the rest. "You are the girl who waited upon her last
night, are not you?"
She hesitated and stammered in her reply, and seemed a good deal
confused by the directness of my assertion. At length, however, she
blurted forth,--
"Don't know what you are talking about, mas'r."
In the meanwhile, the man had walked slowly away, as if he had had
enough of my questions; and, turning to an old woman who was one of
the party, I said,--
"At all events, goody, you can tell me where aunt Jenny is--Mrs. Bab
Thornton's cook. She is my servant now, you know, and I don't want her
ill-used or neglected."
"I don't know nothing of nobody, mas'r," replied the old woman. "But I
do know we'se got to obey orders; and if we stands here talking to
strangers about mas'r's 'fairs, we'se likely to get flogged."
"Neither Mr. Thornton nor his son will ever flog you again," I
answered; "for they have both gone to prison for what they did here
this morning."
"Can't tell, don't know, mas'r," answered the old woman. And she beat
a retreat into the house, followed by another, somewhat younger than
herself.
The youngest of the party, however, stood her ground; and, after a
quick glance round, apparently to see that no one was watching, she
gave a rapid movement of her thumb, over her shoulder towards the
wood, which, on the eastern side, came within two hundred yards of the
house. My eye followed her gesture, which certainly was not the exact
direction I had intended to take; and, as I could perceive no
horse-path, I looked, I suppose, a little puzzled.
"You go down dere quick," said the girl, in a whisper; "follow de
track, you find it."
Then raising her voice aloud, she said, evidently intending her words
for the ears of others,--
"Can't tell you anything, mas'r. Don't know; so no use your waiting."
Beckoning the lad to follow with my horse, I crossed the field in the
direction she had pointed out, guided by a narrow, and not very
distinct, track of footsteps, which, however, widened out and became
more like a beaten path as we approached the wood. There two or three
other little paths converged; and I found I could pass on horseback
easily enough.
How far I had to go, I know not; nor what might be likely to occur on
the way. But, after some consideration and some doubt, I determined to
send back my companion, and proceed on my journey alone. As soon as we
were completely out of sight of the house, I took the rein from him,
saying,--
"I will not take you any farther, my good boy. I think you had better
find some other way back, so that they may not see, from the house,
that you have left me."
"Oh, I do dat easily, mas'r," answered the lad; "go down de edge of de
Swamp and round."
"First, tell me," I said, "where does this road lead?"
"Ole Billy Thornton's ole house," answered the youth.
"But this is not, I think, the road that poor Hercules intended me to
take?" I added, interrogatively.
"Dar say he meant the waggon-road; but it is all de same," replied the
lad. "Dey both come out close together, and dat ar gal jog her turn
dis way. I see her, dough she were mighty quick."
And he laughed with the peculiar laugh of his people.
"Then I cannot miss my way to the old place," I observed.
"Oh, dear, no," answered the boy; "only just follow de track; keep
always de biggest; and when you ride 'cross de savannah, look where
him very green. Don't you go dere, for he's very deep dere. But keep
where him brown and bushy, and where you see ox or horse feet."
His directions were very good, as I found afterwards; although I will
confess that I had no idea at the time of the sort of place I was
venturing into, called, and not without reason, "The Great Dismal
Swamp." I am told that in the spring of the year, nothing can be more
deceitfully beautiful than the aspect which it puts on. The whole
ground, even in the most plashy places, is covered with flowers. The
trees are literally robed and loaded with the yellow jasmine, the
trumpet honey-suckle, and other climbing plants. The cedars and
junipers mingle their darker colours with the light-green foliage of
the spring; and the very snakes as they glide across the path, or curl
among the branches, look as if they were masses of living gems. In the
height of summer, or the beginning of autumn, the scene is very
different. Still, however, there is something grand about it from its
very gloom.
A profound sense of loneliness came upon me as I rode on. I don't know
what it was, or how to account for the feeling, but the sensation
produced by the aspect of these woods was different from that of any
other forest scenery through which I had passed in Virginia. Where
patches of woodland, very often of considerable extent, had been
scattered amongst the cultivated ground, one always felt that one
should soon reach free air and human associations again; but here, it
seemed as if one were at the end of man's domain--as if the ground one
trod upon never had been, never could be, cultivated; that there was a
bar, and a proscription, and a curse against it--that one was
proceeding away from civilization, and tending towards nothing.
The first half-mile was through dense, deep forest, with tall, thin
trees, rising up so close together that they evidently had not room to
glow; each struggling with his fellow, as, in too densely a crowded
population, every man stinted his neighbour in his own struggle for
life.
Then came a track, where I know not what catastrophe seemed to have
terminated this overcrowded contention. For three or four square
miles, the scene was one of desolation and decay. Fallen trees,
stunted bushes, low junipers, plashy pools, thickets of laurel and
ivy, silver gleams of small ponds, scanty lines of savannah--here, a
dried-up patch of black mud, cracked into deep fissures; there, an
undrainable spot, where the horse sank above his knees at every step
in slimy ooze; now, a tangled brake, where a hundred men might have
concealed themselves; and now, a swampy piece, from the long grass of
which a tall white bird would spring up and soar away,--such were the
objects that presented themselves on every side; and when viewed from
the rather more elevated ground, by which the track was approached,
showed like a wild and dismal moor with here and there a clump of tall
trees rising above the rest of the expanse, and a deep, lowering belt
of forest in the distance, girding it in on every side.
On I rode, however, my horse sometimes stumbling over the thorn-trees,
sometimes sinking almost to his girths in the deep, black mud. The sun
declining in the sky, and the gloomy aspect of everything round me,
sank into my heart, and depressed my spirits.
Oh, how closely allied in this mysterious state of being is the
material and the moral--how susceptible is even the soul itself of the
influences poured in upon it through the channels of the external
senses! The memories of all that had been taking place during the last
two days seemed to combine themselves with the gloomy features of the
scene around me. Hope diminished, apprehension increased. Imagination
triumphed over reason; and I felt as if I were going on towards sorrow
and disappointment and misfortunes.
Such gloomy fits have sometimes possessed me before; but it is man's
privilege and his duty to triumph over them; and whenever I feel the
shadow of the cloud, I try to nerve my heart to resist, and to call up
faith and trust to support mere human resolution.
"There is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow." "Not a hair
of our head falls to the ground unnumbered." And if so, God is with
us. Onward!