CHAPTER XXV.
PATTY CANNON'S.
Phoebus passed along the side of a large, black, cypress-shadedmill-pond, and found the boundary stone again, and took the angle fromits northern face as a compass-point, and, proceeding in that direction,soon fell in with a sort of blind path hardly feasible for wheels, whichran almost on the line between the states of Maryland and Delaware,passing in sight of several of these old boundary stones. Not a dwellingwas visible as he proceeded, not even a clearing, not a stream exceptone mere gutter in the sand, not a man, hardly an animal or a bird; themonotonous sand-pines, too low to moan, too thick to expand, too dry togive shade, yet grew and grew, like poor folks' sandy-headed children,and kept company only with some scrubby oaks that had strayed that way,till pine-cone and acorn seemed to have bred upon each other, and thewild hogs disdained the progeny.
"Maybe I'll git killed up yer in this Pangymonum," Jimmy reflected; "an'though I 'spose it don't make no difference whair you plant your bones,I don't want to grow up into ole pines. Good, big, preachin' kind ofpines, that's a little above the world, an' says 'Holy, rolley,melancho-ly, mind your soul-y'--I could go into their sap and shatsfust-rate. But to die yer an' never be found in these desert wastes ispore salvage for a man that's lived among the white sails of the bay,an' loved a woman elegant as Ellenory."
It was dark, and he could hardly see his way in half an hour. Sometimesa crow would caw, to hear strange sounds go past, like an oldwatchman's rattle moved one cog. The stars became bright, however, andthe moon was new, and when Phoebus came to a large cleared opening inthe pines, the lambent heavens broke forth and bathed the sandy fieldswith silver, and showed a large, high house at the middle of theclearing, with outside chimneys, one thicker than the other, and a porchof two stories facing the east.
Though not a large dwelling, it was large for those days and for thatunfrequented region, and its roof seemed to Phoebus remarkably steepand long, and yet, while enclosing so much space, had not a singledormer window in it. The southern gable was turned towards the intruder,and in it were two small windows at the top, crowded between the thickchimney and the roof slope. The two main stories were well lighted,however, and the porch was enclosed at the farther end, making a doubleoutside room there. No sheds, kitchens, or stables were attached to thepremises, but an old pole-well, like some catapult, reared its long poleat half an angle between the crotch of another tree. Roads, marked bytall worm fences, crossed at the level vista where this tall housepresided, and a quarter of a mile beyond the cross-roads, to thenortheast, was another house, much smaller, and hip-gabled, likeTwiford's, standing up a lane and surrounded by small stables, cribs,orchard, and garden.
"I never 'spected to come yer," Jimmy Phoebus observed, "but I'vehearn tell of this place considabul. The big barn-roofed house is JoeJohnston's tavern for the entertainment of Georgey nigger-traders thatcomes to git his stolen goods. It's at the cross-roads, three miles fromCannon's Ferry, whar the passengers from below crosses the Nanticoke furEaston and the north, an' the stages from Cambridge by the King's roadmeets 'em yonder at the tavern. The tavern stands in Dorchester County,with a tongue of Caroline reaching down in front of it, an' Delawarestate hardly twenty yards from the porch. Thar ain't a court-housewithin twenty miles, nor a town in ten, except Crotcher's Ferry, wharevery Sunday mornin' the people goin' to church kin pick up a basketfulof ears, eyes, noses, fingers, an' hair bit off a-fightin' on Saturdayafternoon. They call the country around Crotcher's, Wire Neck, caze noneck is left thar that kin be twisted off; the country in lower Car'linethey calls 'Puckem,' caze the crops is so puckered up. They say Joe's agreat man among his neighbors, an' kin go to the Legislater. The t'otherhouse out in the fields is Patty Cannon's own, whar she did all herdev'lishness fur twenty years, till Joe got rich enough to build hispalace."
With the rapid execution of a man who only plans with his feet andhands, the bay sailor observed that there was a grove of good hightimber--oaks and pines--only a few rods from the cross-roads and to theright, under cover of which he could draw near the tavern. As heproceeded to gain its shade, he heard extraordinary sounds of turbulencefrom the front of the tavern, the yelling of men, the baying of hounds,oaths and laughter, and, listening as he crossed the intervening space,he fell into a ditch inadvertently, almost at the edge of the timber.
"Hallo!" cried Jimmy, lying quite still to draw his breath, since theditch was now perfectly dry, "this ditch seems to me to pint right forthat tavern."
He therefore crawled along its dry bed till it crossed under a road by awooden culvert or little bridge of a few planks.
The noise at the tavern was now like a fight, and, as Phoebuscontinued to crawl forward, he heard twenty voices, crying,
"Gouge him, Owen Daw!" "Hit him agin, Cyrus James!" "Chaw him right up!""Give' em room, boys!"
Having crawled to what he judged the nearest point of concealedapproach, Phoebus lost the moment to take a single glance only, and,drawing his old slouched hat down on his face to hide the bandaging, hemuttered, "Now's jess my time," and crept up to the back of the crowd,which was all facing inwards in a circle, and did not perceive him.
A fully grown man, as it seemed, was having a fight with a boy hardlyfifteen years old; but the boy was the more reckless and courageous ofthe two, while the man, with three times the boy's strength, lacked thestomach or confidence to avail himself of it; and, having had the boydown, was now being turned by the latter, amid shouts of "Three to twoon Owen Daw!" "Bite his nose off, Owen Daw!" "Five to two that CyrusJames gits gouged by Owen Daw!"
The boy with a Celtic face and supple body was full of zeal to meritfavor and inflict injury, and, as the circle of vagrants and outlaws ofall ages reeled and swayed to and fro, Phoebus, unobserved by anybody,put his head down among the rest and searched the faces for those ofLevin Dennis or Joe Johnson.
Neither was there, and the only face which arrested his attention was awoman's, standing in the door of the enclosed space at the end of theporch, at right angles to the central door of the tavern, and justbeside it. The whole building was without paint, and weather-stained,but the room on the porch was manifestly newer, as if it had been anafterthought, and its two windows revealed some of the crude appendagesof a liquor bar, as a fire somewhere within flashed up and lighted it.
By this fire the woman's face was also revealed, and she was so muchinterested in the fight that she turned all parts of her countenanceinto the firelight, slapping her hands together, laughing like a man,dropping her oaths at the right places, and crying:
"I bet my money on little Owen Daw! Cy James ain't no good, by God!Yer's whiskey a-plenty for Owen Daw if he gouges him. Give it to him,Owen Daw! Shame on ye, Cy James!"
There was occasional servility and deference to this woman from membersof the crowd, however they were absorbed in the fight. She was what iscalled a "chunky" woman, short and thick, with a rosy skin, low butpleasing forehead, coal-black hair, a rolling way of swaying and movingherself, a pair of large black eyes, at once daring, furtive, andfamiliar, and a large neck and large breast, uniting the bull-dog andthe dam, cruelty and full womanhood.
Behind this woman, whom Phoebus thought to be Patty Cannon herself,the moonlight from the rear came through the door in the older and mainbuilding, shining quite through the house, and Phoebus saw that therear door was also open and was unguarded.
He took the first chance, therefore, of dodging around the corner of thebar, intending to pass around the north gable of the house and dart upthe stairs by the unwatched door; but he had barely got out of sightwhen a loud hurrah burst from the crowd as a feeble voice was heardcrying "Enough, enough!" followed by jeers rapidly approaching.
The large outside chimney, where Phoebus now was, had an arched cavityin it large enough to contain a man, being the chimney of two differentrooms within, whose smoke, uniting higher up, ascended through one stem.Into this cavity Phoebus dodged, in time to avoid the beaten party tothe fight, the grown man, who staggered bli
ndly by towards a well, hisface dripping blood, and he was sobbing babyishly; but the concealedsailor heard him say, in a whining tone:
"She set him on me; I'll make her pay for it."
Several of the partisans or tormentors of this craven followed afterhim, and Jimmy himself fell in at the rear, and, instead of going withthe rest towards the well, where the loser was bathing his face,Phoebus softly stepped over the low sill of the back door, the woman'sback being turned to him, and, as he had anticipated, a stairwayascended there out of a large room, which answered the purposes ofparlor and hall, dining and gambling room, as Jimmy drank in at oneglance, from seeing tables, dishes and cards, bottles and whips, armsand saddles. This stairway had no baluster, and was not safe in the darkfor strangers to the house.
Satisfying himself by an interior observation, as he had suspectedexteriorly, that there was no cellar under Johnson's tavern, the sailorslipped up the stairs, intent to find where Judge Custis's property andEllenora's wayward son had been concealed. The second story had a hall,which opened only at the front of the house and upon the upper piazza,and four doors upon this hall indicated four bedrooms. One of them wasajar, and, peeping through, Phoebus saw, extended on a bed, obliviousto all the righting and din outside, Joe Johnson the negro-trader, hisform revealed by a lamp and the open fire.
An impulse, immediately repressed, came on the sailor to draw his knifeand stab Johnson to the heart, as probably the villain who had shot himfrom the cat-boat. The negro-trader wearily turned his long length inthe bed, and Phoebus slipped back along the hall to the only doorbesides that was not closed fast, leading into the room at the rearsouthern corner of the house.
This door creaked loudly as it was opened, and a man of a bandit formand dress, who was lying on a pallet within, revealed by the brightmoonlight streaming in at two windows, half roused himself as Jimmycrouched at the door, where a partition, as of a very largeclothes-press, taking up fully half the room, rose between the intruderand the occupant.
"Who's there?" exclaimed a voice, with a slight lisp in it.
Jimmy discovered that there was a low trap or door near the floor,opening into this remarkable closet, and he slipped inside and drew hisknife again. The man was heard moving about the narrow room, and hefinally seemed to walk out into the hall and down the stairs.
Feeling around his closet, which was pitch dark, Phoebus found a deepindentation in it, as of a smaller closet, and the sound of crooningvoices came from above.
"By smoke!" Jimmy mentally exclaimed, "this big closet is nothin' but ablind fur a stairway in the little closet to climb up to the dungeonunder the big roof."
He stole out again and found the moonlight now streaming upon an emptypallet and the burly watchman gone, and streaming, too, upon a largerdoor in the closet opposite the indentation he had felt, this doorsecured by a padlock through a staple fastening an iron bar. The key wasin the padlock, and Jimmy turned it back, drew off the lock and droppedthe bar.
The moment he opened the door an almost insupportable smell came down ashallow hatchway within, up which leaned a rough step-ladder, movable,and of stout construction.
"That smell," said Phoebus, entering, and pulling the door closebehind him, "might be wool, or camel, or a moral menagerie from theroyal gardings of Europe, but I guess it's Nigger."
He went up the steep steps with some difficulty, as they were made topass only one person, and at the top he entered a large garret, dividedinto two by a heavy partition of yellow pine, with a door at the middleof it, and from beyond this partition came the sounds of crooning andbabbling he had heard.
The bright night, shining through a small gable window, revealed thisouter half of the garret empty, and not furniture or other appurtenancethan the hole in the floor up which he had come, and the door into theplace of wailing beyond, which was fastened by a long iron spikedropping into a staple that overshot a heavy wooden bar. As he slippedup the spike and took the bar off, Phoebus heard some person in theroom below mutter, and lock the great padlock upon the other door,effectually barring his escape by that egress.
"We must take things as they come," thought Jimmy, grimly, "particklerin Pangymonum, whar I am now."
He also reflected that the arrangements of this kidnappers' pen, simpleas they seemed, were quite sufficient. If authority should demand tosearch the house, the double clothes-press below, with the ladder pulledup into the loft, became a harmless closet hung with wardrobe matters,and the inner closet a storeroom for articles of bulk; and no humanbeing could either go up or come down without passing two inhabitedfloors and three different doors, besides the door to the slave-pen.
This last door Phoebus now threw open and walked into the pen itself,stooping his head to avoid the low entrance.
For some minutes he could not see the contents at all in the totaldarkness that prevailed, as there was no window whatever in this pen orden, but he heard various voices, and inhaled the strong, close air ofmany African breaths exhausting the supply of oxygen, and knew thatchains and irons were being moved against the boards of the floor.
"Thair ain't nothin' to do yer," Jimmy remarked, softly, "but jess squatdown an' git a-climated, as they say about strangers to our biliousshore, an' git your eyeballs tuned to the dark. But I should say thatthis was both hokey-pokey an' Pangymonum, by smoke!"
A man in some part of the den was praying in a highly nervous, excitedway, slobbering out his agonizing sentences, and dwelling hard upon hismore open vowels, and keeping several other inmates in sympathy or equalmisery, as they piped in answer to his apostrophes:
"Lawd, de-_scen'! De_-scen', O my Lawd. I will not let dee go; no, oh myLawd! Come, save me! Yes, my Lawd! Come walkin' on de waters! Come outenLazarus's tomb! Come on de chario'f fire! Come in de power! De-scen'now, O my Lawd!"
Phoebus's entrance made no excitement, and he crouched down to awaitthe strengthening of his eyes to see around him. The place appeared tobe nearly twenty-five feet square, and was cross-boarded both the gableway and under the sloping roof, whose eaves were planked up a foot ortwo above the floor; in the middle any man could stand upright andscarcely touch the ridge beam with his hands, but along the slopingsides could barely sit upright.
The man still continuing to express his absolute subjection of spirit ina frenzy of words, and several little children crying and shoutingresponsively, Phoebus ordered the man to cease, after asking himkindly to do so several times; and the command being disobeyed, heslapped the praying one with his open hand, and the poor wretch rolledover in a kind of feeble fit.
A little child somewhere continuing to cry, Phoebus took it in hisarms and held between it and the starlight, at the half-open door, oneof the shillings he had obtained from the old cabin on Broad Creek a fewhours before. The child, seeing something shine, seized it and heldfast, and Phoebus next passed his hand over the face of a sleepingman, who was snoring calmly and strenuously on the floor beside him. Hemade room for the faint light to shine upon the sleeper's black face,and exclaimed, in a moment:
"If it ain't Samson Hat I hope I may be swallered by a whale!"
Calling his name, "Samson! Samson!" Phoebus observed a most dejectedmulatto person, who had been lying back in the shadows, crawl forward,rattling his manacles. This man, when spoken to, replied with suchrefinement and accuracy, however his face betokened great inward misery,that the sailor took as careful a survey of him as the moonlightpermitted, coming in by that one lean attic window. He was a man who hadshaved himself only recently, and his dark, curling side-whiskers andclean lips, and the tuft of goatee in the hollow of his chin, andintelligent, high forehead, seemed altogether out of place in thisdarksome eyrie of the sad and friendless.
"Is he your friend, sir?" asked this man, turning towards Samson. "Hemust have a good conscience if he is, for he slept soon after he wasbrought here, and has never uttered a single complaint."
"And you have, I reckon?" said the waterman.
"Oh, yes, sir; I have been treated with such ingra
titude. It would breakany gentleman's heart to hear my tale. Who is your friend, sir?"
"Samson, wake up, old bruiser!" cried Phoebus, shaking the sleepersoundly; "you didn't give in to one or two, by smoke!"
"Is it you, Jimmy?" the old negro finally said, with a sheepishexpression; "why, neighbor, I'm glad to see you, but I'm sorry, too. Ablack man dey don't want to kill yer, caze dey kin sell him, but a whiteman like you dey don't want to keep, and dey dassn't let him go."
"A _white_ man here?" exclaimed the superior-looking person; "what canthey mean?"
"I'm ironed so heavy, Jimmy," continued Samson, "dat I can't set upmuch. My han's is tied togedder wid cord, my feet's in an iron clevis,and a ball's chained to de clevis."
"Give me your hands," exclaimed Jimmy; "I'll settle them cords, bysmoke!"
In a minute he had severed the cords at the wrist, and the intelligentyellow man pleaded that a similar favor be done for him, to which thesailor acceded ungrudgingly.
"Jimmy," said Samson, "if it's ever known in Prencess Anne--as I 'spectit never will be, fur we're in bad hands, neighbor--dar'll be a laughinstid of a cry, fur ole boxin' Samson, dat was kidnapped an' fetched tojail by a woman!"
"You licked by a woman, Samson?"
"Yes, Jimmy, a woman all by herseff frowed me down, tied my hands an'feet, an' brought me to dis garret. I hain't seen nobody but her an'dese yer people, sence I was tuk."
"Ha!" exclaimed the dejected mulatto, "that's a favorite feat of PattyCannon. She is the only woman ever seen at a threshing-floor who canstand in a half-bushel measure and lift five bushels of grain at onceupon her shoulders, weighing three hundred pounds."
"I ain't half dat," Samson smiled, quietly, "an' she handled me, shoreenough. You remember, Jimmy, when I leff you by ole Spring Hill church,to go an' git a woman on a little wagon to show me de way to Laurel?"
"Why, it was only yisterday, Samson!"
"Dat was de woman, Jimmy. She was a chunky, heavy-sot woman, right purtyto look at, an' maybe fifty year ole. She was de nicest woman mos' everI see. She made me git off my mule an' ride in de wagon by her, an' takea drink of her own applejack--she said she 'stilled it on her farm. Shesaid she knowed Judge Custis, an' asked me questions about PrencessAnne, an' wanted me to work fur her some way. We was goin froo a pore,pine country, a heap wuss dan Hardship, whar Marster Milburn come outen,an' hadn't seen nobody on de road till we come to a run she said wasnamed de Tussocky branch, whar she got out of de wagon to water herhoss. At dat place she come up to me an' says, 'Samson, I'll wrastleyou!' 'Go long,' says I, 'I kin't wrastle no woman like you.' 'You gotto,' she says, swearin' like a man, an' takin' holt of me jess like aman wrastles. I felt ashamed, an' didn't know what to do, and, befo' Icould wink, Jimmy, dat woman had give me de trip an' shoved me wid ablow like de kick of an ox, and was a-top of my back wid a knee likeiron pinnin' of me down."
"The awful huzzy of Pangymonum!"
"De fust idee I had was dat she was a man dressed up like a woman. Istarted like lightnin' to jump up, an' my legs caught each oder; she hadcarried de cord to tie me under her gown, an' clued it aroun' me in aminute. As I run at her an' fell hard, she drew de runnin' knot tightan' danced aroun' me like a fat witch, windin' me all up in de rope. Desweat started from my head, I yelled an' fought an' fell agin, an', as Ilaid with my tongue out like a calf in de butcher's cart, she whisperedto me, 'Maybe you're de las' nigger ole Patty Cannon'll ever tie!'
"At dat name I jess prayed to de Lord, but it was too late. She put mein de cart an' gagged me so I couldn't say a word, and blood came outenmy mouth. I heard her talkin' to people as we passed by a town an' overa bridge. Nobody looked in de cart whar I laid kivered over, till wecome to a ferry in de night, an' dar we passed over, and I heard hertalkin' to a man on dis side of de ferry. He come to de side of de wagonan' peeped at me, layin' helpless dar, my eyes jess a-prayin' tohim--and he had an elegant eye in his head, Jimmy. He says softly tohisself, 'Dis is no consignment, manifes'ly, to Isaac an' Jacob Cannon,'an' he kivered me up again, an' the woman fetched me yer, put on deirons, and shoved me into dis hole in de garret."
"I reckon that was Isaac Cannon, t'other Levite that never sees anythingthat ain't in his quoshint."
"How's the purty gals, Jimmy? I shall see' em in my dreams, I' spect, ifI _am_ sold Souf. I ain't got long to stay, nohow, Jimmy, fur I'm mos'sixty. If you ever git out, tell my marster to buy dat gal Virgie, an'make her free. She ain't fit to be a slave."
"Gals has their place," said Phoebus, "but not whair men has to fightfor liberty. How many fighting men are we here?"
"I 'spect you's de only one, Jimmy; we's all chained up; desenigger-dealers is all blacksmifs an' keeps balls, hobbles, gripes, an'clevises, an' loads us wid iron."
"Who is that woman back yonder so quare an' still?"
"Why, Jimmy, don't you know Aunt Hominy, Jedge Custis's ole cook? Deybrought her in dis mornin' wi' two little children outen Teackle Hallkitchen; one of dem you give dat silver to--little Ned. Hominy ain'tsaid a word sence she come."
Jimmy Phoebus went back to the corner of the den where the old womancowered, and called her name in many different accents and with kindassurances:
"Hominy, ole woman, don't you know Ellenory's Jimmy? Jedge Custis iscomin' for you, aunty. I'm yer to take you home."
She did not speak at all, and Phoebus lifted her without resistancenearer to the moonlight. Her lips mumbled unintelligibly, her eyes weredull, she did not seem to know them.
Samson crawled forward, and also called her name kindly:
"Aunt Hominy, Miss Vesty's sent fur you. Dis yer is Jimmy Phoebus."
The little boy Ned now spoke up:
"Aunt Hominy ain't spoke sence dat Quaker man killed little Phillis."
"Jimmy," solemnly whispered Samson, "Aunt Hominy's lost her mind."
"Yes," spoke up the dejected and elegant mulatto prisoner, "she's becomean idiot. They sometimes take it that way."
Phoebus bent his face close down to the poor old creature's, sittingthere in her checkered turban and silver earrings, clean and tidy asservants of the olden time, and he studied her vacant countenance, hertenantless eyes, her lips moving without connection or relevance, andfelt that cruelty had inflicted its last miraculous injury--whipped outher mind from its venerable residence, and left her body yet to sufferthe pains of life without the understanding of them.
"Oh, shame! shame!" cried the sailor, tears finally falling from hiseyes, "to deceive and steal this pore, believin' intelleck! To rob thecook of the little tin cup full o' brains she uses to git food fur badan' fur good folks! Why, the devils in Pangymonum wouldn't treat that away the kind heart that briled fur 'em."
"De long man said he was Quaker man," exclaimed Vince, the larger boy,"an' he come to take Hominy to de free country. Hominy was sold, shesaid, an' must go. De long man had a boat--Mars Dennis's boat--an' in denight little Phillis woke up an' cried. Nobody couldn't stop her. Delong man picked little Phillis up by de leg an' mashed her skull in aginde flo'. Aunt Hominy ain't never spoke no mo'."
"Did you hear the long man speak after that, Vince?"
"Yes, mars'r. I heerd de long man tell Mars Dennis dat if he didn'tsteer de boat an' shet his mouf, he'd shoot him. I heerd de pistol gooff, but Mars Dennis wasn't killed, fur I saw him steerin' afterwards."
"Thank God!" spoke the sailor, kissing the child. "Ellenory's boy wasinnocent, by smoke! That nigger-trader shot me an' threatened Levin'slife if he listened to me hailing of him. The noise I heard was themurder of the baby, whose cries betrayed the coming of the vessel.Samson, thar's been treachery ever sence we left Salisbury, an' thatnigger Dave's a part of it."
"He said he hated me caze I larned him to box. Maybe my fightin's beenmy punishment, Jimmy, but I never struck a man a foul blow."
"And what was _your_ hokey-pokey?" the pungy captain cried to the manwho had been making so much religious din. "Did they sell you fur neverknowin' whar to stop a good thing?"
The man hoarsely
explained, himself interested by the disclosures andfraternity around him:
"I was slave to a local preacher in Delaware, an' de sexton of dechurch. It was ole Barrett's chapel, up yer between Dover an'Murderkill--de church whar Bishop Coke an' Francis Asbury fust met on depulpit stairs. My marster an' me was boff members of it, but he lovedmoney bad, an' I was to be free when I got to be twenty-five years ole,accordin' to de will of his Quaker fader, dat left me to him. Las'Sunday night dey had a long class-meetin' dar, an' when nobody was leffin de church but my marster an' me, he says to me, 'Rodney, le's you an'me have one more prayer togedder befo' you put out dat las' lamp. Youpray, Rodney!' I knelt an' prayed for marster after I must leave him tobe free next year, an', while I was prayin' loud, people crept in dechurch an' tied me, and marster was gone."
"He sold you fur life to them kidnappers, boy, becaze you was goin' tobe free next year. Don't your Bible tell you to watch _an'_ pray?"
"Yes, marster."
"Well, then, boys, it's all watch to-night and no more praying," criedJimmy Phoebus, cheerily. "Here are four men, loving liberty, bound tohave it or die. Thar's one of' em with a knife, an' the first kidnapperthat crosses that sill, man or woman--fur we'll trust no more women,Samson--gits the knife to the hilt! The blessed light that shone ontoCalvary an' Bunker Hill is a gleamin' on the blade. Work off your irons,if you kin; I'll git you rafters outen this roof to jab with if youcan't do no better. Are you all with me?"
"I am, Jimmy," answered Samson, quietly.
"I'll die with ye, too," exclaimed the praying man, with rekindledspirit.
"We will all be murdered, gentlemen," protested the dejected mulatto. "Iknow these desperate people."
"Then you crawl over in the corner," Phoebus commanded, "and see threemen fight fur you. We don't want any fine buck nigger to spile hisbeauty for us."
The man crawled back into the blackness of the den again, and Phoebusbegan to search the open half of the garret for implements of war. Hefound two long pieces of chain, with which determined men might beat outan adversary's brains.
"Now, boys," Jimmy delivered himself, "I hain't lost my head yisterdaynor to-day neither, by smoke! I'm goin' to kill the first person thatcomes yer, an' git the keys of this den from him, an' lock all of you infast, an' the dead kidnapper, too. Then they won't git at you to shipyou off till I kin git to Seaford, over yer in Delaware--it's not morethan six mile--whar I know three captains of pungies, and all of' em'sin port thar now--all friends of Jimmy Phoebus, all well armed, andtheir crews enough to handle Pangymonum!"
A noise was heard at the lock of the lower door, and Phoebus slippedinto the enclosed den and took his station just within the door.
"Remember," he whispered, "I open the fight."
The lock snapped at the door below the step-ladder, the bolt fell, andthe light of a lamp flashed up the hatchway and upon the naked roof, andthrough the cracks of the boarded garret pen.
The sailor's knife was in his belt-pouch, where he carried it over thehip. As he leaned down to look through a crack in the low door, he felta hand from the gloom behind touch him.
Instinctively he felt for his knife, and it was gone.
"Captain," cried the voice of the dejected mulatto, as the door of thepen flew open and the bandit-looking stranger appeared with the lamp,"there's a white man here going to kill you. I've taken his knife fromhim and saved your life. It's a rebellion, captain!"
"Help! Patty! Joe!" cried the man, with a loud voice, as Jimmy Phoebusthrew himself upon him and extinguished the lamp, and the two powerfulmen rolled on the floor together in a grip of mortal combat.
Phoebus was a man of great power, but his antagonist was strong andslippery, too, and a spirited rough-and-tumble fighter.
The pungy captain was on top, the bandit man locked him fast in his armsand legs, and tried to stab him in the side, as Phoebus felt thehandle of a clasp-knife, which seemed slow to obey its spring, strikehim repeatedly all round the groin, in strokes that would have killed,inflicted by the blade.
Phoebus attempted to drag the man to the hatchway and force him downit, while the two negro assistants of Phoebus beat down the negrotraitor with their chains, and searched him vainly for the knife he hadfilched.
At last Phoebus prevailed, and his antagonist rolled down the openhatchway, seven feet or more, still keeping his desperate hold onPhoebus, and dragging him along; and both might have cracked theirskulls but for a woman just in the act of hurrying up the ladder,against whom their two bodies pitched and were cushioned upon her.
The shock, however, stunned both of them, and when Phoebus recollectedhimself he was tied hand and foot and lying on the garret floor again,and over him stood Joe Johnson, flourishing a cowhide.
The bandages had again been torn from Phoebus's face, and he wasbleeding at the flesh-wound in his cheek, and breathless from hisconflict. A woman had dashed a vessel of water into his face, and thishad revived him.
The other man, called "captain," had, meantime, by the aid of thiswoman--the same Phoebus had seen down-stairs--subdued and tied theblack insurgents, and both of them were flourishing their whips over thebacks and heads of the prisoners, big and little, so that the garret wasno slight reflection of the place of eternal torment, as the shadows ofthe monsters, under the weak light, whipped and danced against the beamsand shingles, and shrieks and shouts of "Mercy!" blended in hideousdissonance.
The woman now turned her lamp on the sailor's rough, swarthy, injuredcountenance, and looked him over out of her dark, bold eyes:
"Joe, this is a nigger, by God!"
Johnson and the captain also examined him carefully, and, uttering anoath, the former kicked the prostrate man with his heavy boot.
"I popped this bloke last night," he said, "and thought the scold's curehad him. He's a sea-crab playin' the setter fur niggers. He sang beef tome in Princess Anne. I told him thar he'd pass for a nigger, Patty, andwe'll sell him fur one to Georgey!"
"All's fish that comes to our net, Joe," the woman chuckled; "he'll sellhigh, too."
"That white man," spoke the voice of Samson, within the pen, his chainsrattling, "has hunderds of friends a-lookin' fur him, an' you'll ketchit if you don't let him off."
"What latitat chants there?" Joe Johnson demanded of Patty Cannon.
"That's my nigger, Joe," the woman answered.
"Fetch him to the light."
The captain propped Samson up, and Joe Johnson glared into his face, andthen struck him down with the handle of his heavy whip.
"Patty," he growled, "that nigger's scienced; he's the champion scrapperof Somerset. He knocked me down, and I marked him fur it; and now, byGod! I'm a-goin' to burn him alive on Twiford's island."
He swore an oath, half blasphemous, half blackguard, and the captainmurmured, with a lisp:
"The white man is the only _witness_. Make sure of him!"
Irons were produced, and the captain speedily fastened Phoebus's handsin a clevis, and hobbled his feet, and placed him, without brutality, inthe pen, and, further, chained him there to a ring in the joist below.As the door was closed and bolted, a voice from the darkness of the pencried out:
"Aunt Patty, let me out: I saved the captain's life; I took the whiteman's knife. I'll serve you faithfully if you only let me go."
"He blowed the gab," said Joe Johnson, "but it won't serve him."
"Zeke," cried the woman, "it's no use. You go to Georgey with the nextgang--you an' the white nigger thar."
The man threw himself upon the floor and moaned and prayed, as thelamplight disappeared and the hatchway slid echoingly over the stairs,and the lower bolts were drawn. As he lay there in horror and amidcontempt, a voice arrested his ears near by, singing, with musical andeasy spirit, so low that it seemed a hymn, from the roads and fields fardown beneath:
"Deep-en de woun' dy hands have made In dis weak, helpless soul."
The man listened with awe and silence, as if a spirit hummed the tune,and forgot his doom of slaver
y a moment in the deeper anguish of atreacherous heart that simple hymn bestirred. It was only JimmyPhoebus, thinking what he could say to punish this double traitormost, who had turned his back upon his race and upon gratitude, andJimmy had remembered the poor woman chained to the tree on Twiford'sisland, and her oft-reiterated hymn; and the conclusion was flashed uponhis mind that the mulatto wretch who decoyed her away and sold her wasnone other than his renegade fellow-prisoner, in turn made merchandiseof because too dangerous to set at large in the probable hue-and-cry forher.
"Poor Mary!" Phoebus slowly spoke, in his deepest tones, with solemncadence.
The wretched man listened and trembled.
"Mary's sperrit's callin' 'Zeke!'" Phoebus continued, awful in hisinflection.
The miserable procurer's heart stopped at the words, and his eyeballsturned in torment.
"Come, Zeke! poor Mary's a-waitin' for ye!" cried the sailor, suddenly,in a voice of thunder, and as suddenly relapsed into the low singing ofthe quiet hymn again:
"Deep-en de woun' dy hands have made In dis weak, helpless soul, Till mercy, wid its mighty aid De-scen to make me whole; Yes, Lord! De-scen to make me whole."
The elegant Iscariot, at the thunder of the invocation, had reached intoa place between two of the cypress shingles in the roof, where he hadhidden the sailor's knife, the blade being pressed out of sight, andonly the handle within his grasp. It had been overlooked in the excitingscenes of the previous few minutes, and now recurred to his mind, assuperstitious passions rolled like dreadful meteors across the black andhopeless chasm of his despairing soul.
When the low drone of the hymn he had heard his victim sing to her baby,when her faith in him was pure and childlike, crossed his maddened earsagain, he raised one shriek of "Mercy!" to which no answer fell, anddrew the blade across his throat and fell dead in the kidnappers' den.