Among the Pines Part 4

The last remark was just the one drop needed to make his wrath "bile over," and he savagely exclaimed: "I tell you, sir, we will not be trifled with. You must be off to Georgetown at once. You can have just half an hour to leave the Boro', not a second more."

His tone and manner aroused what little combativeness there is in me.

Rising from my chair, and taking up my outside-coat, in which was one of Colt's six-shooters, I said to him: "Sir, I am here, a peaceable man, on peaceable, private business. I have started to go up the country, and go there I shall; and I shall leave this place at my convenience--not before. I have endured your impertinence long enough, and shall have no more of it. If you attempt to interfere with my movements, you will do so at your peril."

My blood was up, and I was fast losing that better part of valor called discretion; and _he_ evidently understood my movement, and did not dislike the turn affairs were taking. There is no telling what might have followed had not Scip just at that instant inserted his woolly head between us, excitedly exclaiming: "Lord bless you, Ma.s.sa B----ll; what _am_ you 'bout? Why, dis gemman am a 'ticlar friend of Cunnel A----.

He'm a reg'lar sesherner. He hates de ablisherners worser dan de debble.

I hard him swar a clar, blue streak 'bout dem only yesterday."

"Ma.s.sa B----ll" was evidently taken aback by the announcement of the negro, but did not seem inclined to "give it up so" at once, for he asked: "How do you know he's the Colonel's friend, Scip? Who told you so?"

"Who told me so?" exclaimed the excited negro, "why, didn't he stay at Captin B----'s, wid de Cunnel, all night last night; and didn't dey set up dar doin' politic business togedder till arter midnight? Didn't de Cunnel come dar in all de storm 'pressly to see dis gemman?"

The ready wit and rude eloquence of the darky amused me, and the idea of the "Cunnel" travelling twenty miles through the terrible storm of the previous night to meet a man who had the New York _Independent_ about him, was so perfectly ludicrous, that I could not restrain my laughter.

That laugh did the business for "Ma.s.sa B----ll." What the negro had said staggered, but did not convince him; but my returning good-humor brought him completely round. Extending his hand to me, he said: "I see, sir, I've woke up the wrong pa.s.senger. Hope you'll take no offence. In these times we need to know who come among us."

"No offence whatever, sir," I replied. "It is easy to be mistaken; but,"

I added smilingly, "I hope, for the sake of the next traveller, you'll be less precipitate another time."

"I _am_ rather hasty; that's a fact," he said. "But no harm is done. So let's take a drink, and say no more about it. The old lady har keeps nary a thing, but we can get the _raal stuff_ close by."

Though not a member of a "Total Abstinence Society," I have always avoided indulging in the quality of fluid that is the staple beverage at the South. I therefore hesitated a moment before accepting the gentleman's invitation; but the alternative seemed to be squarely presented, pistols or drinks; cold lead or poor whiskey, and--I am ashamed to confess it--I took the whiskey.

Returning to the hotel, I found Scip awaiting me. "Ma.s.sa," he said, "we better be gwine. Dat dar sesherner am ugly as de bery ole debble; and soon as he knows I c.u.m de possum ober him 'bout de Cunnel, he'll be down on you _sh.o.r.e_."

The rain had dwindled to a drizzle, which the sun was vigorously struggling to get through with a tolerable prospect of success, and I concluded to take the African's advice. Wrapping myself in an India-rubber overcoat, and giving the darky a blanket of the same material, I started.

[Footnote B: I very much regret to learn, that since my meeting with this most excellent gentleman, being obnoxious to the Secession leaders for his well-known Union sentiments, he has been very onerously a.s.sessed by them for contributions for carrying on the war. The sum he has been forced to pay, is stated as high as forty thousand dollars, but that may be, and I trust is, an exaggeration. In addition--and this fact is within my own knowledge--five of his vessels have been seized in the Northern ports by our Government. This exposure of true Union men to a double fire, is one of the most unhappy circ.u.mstances attendant upon this most unhappy war.]

CHAPTER III.

CROSSING THE "RUNS."

The long, tumble-down bridge which spans the Waccamaw at Conwayboro, trembled beneath our horse's tread, as with lengthened stride he shook the secession mud from his feet, and whirled us along into the dark, deep forest. It may have been the exhilaration of a hearty dinner of oats, or it may have been sympathy with the impatience of his fellow-travellers that spurred him on; whichever it was, away he went as if Lucifer--that first Secessionist--were following close at his heels.

The sun, which for a time had been industriously wedging his way into the dark ma.s.ses of cloud, finally slunk out of sight and left us enveloped in a thick fog, which shut from view all of Cottondom, except a narrow belting of rough pines, and a few rods of sandy road that stretched out in dim perspective before us. There being nothing in the outside creation to attract my attention, I drew the ap.r.o.n of the carriage about me, and settling myself well back on the seat to avoid the thick-falling mist, fell into a train of dreamy reflection.

n.i.g.g.e.rs, slave-auctions, cotton-fields, rice-swamps, and King Cotton himself, that bl.u.s.tering old despot, with his swarthy arms and "under-pinning," his face of bra.s.s, and body of "raw material," pa.s.sed through my mind, like Georgia trains through the Oconee Swamp, till finally my darky friend came into view. He seemed at first a little child, amid the blazing ruins of his wilderness home, gazing in stupid horror on the burning bodies of his father and his kindred. Then he was kneeling at the side of his dying mother in the slave-pen at Cape Lopez, and--still a child--cooped in the "Black-hole" of the accursed slave-s.h.i.+p, his little frame burning with the fever-fire, and his child-heart longing for death. Then he seemed mounting the Cuban slave-block, and as the "going! going! gone!" rung in my ear, he was hurried away, and driven to the cruel task--still a child--on the hot, unhealthy sugar-field. Again he appeared, stealing away at night to a lonely hut, and by the light of a pine-knot, wearily poring over the BOOK of BOOKS, slowly putting letters into words, and words into sentences, that he might know _"What G.o.d says to the black man."_ Then he seemed a man--splendid of frame, n.o.ble of soul--suspended in the whipping-rack, his arms bound above his head, his body resting on the tips of his toes, and the merciless lash falling on his bare back, till the red stream ran from it like a river--scourged because he would not aid in creating beings as wretched as himself, and make merchandise of his own blood to gorge the pocket of an incarnate white devil.

As these things pa.s.sed before me, and I thought of his rare intelligence, of his fine traits of character, and of the true heroism he had shown in risking, perhaps, his own life to get me--a stranger--out of an ugly hobble, I felt a certain spot in my left side warming toward him, very much as it might have done had his blood been as pure as my own. It seemed to me a pity--anti-Abolitionist and Southern-sympathizer though I was--that a man of such rare natural talent, such character and energy, should have his large nature dwarfed, be tethered for life to a cotton-stalk, and made to wear his soul out in a tread-mill, merely because his skin had a darker tinge and his shoe a longer heel than mine.

As I mused over his "strange, eventful history," and thought of the handy way nature has of putting the _right_ man in the _wrong_ place, it occurred to me how "Brother Beecher" one evening, not a long time before, had charmed the last dollar from my waistcoat pocket by exhibiting, _a la_ Barnum, a remarkably ugly "cullud pusson" on his pulpit stairs, and by picturing the awful doom which awaited her--that of being reduced from baby-tending to some less useful employment--if his audience did not at once "do the needful." Then it occurred to me how much finer a spectacle my ebony friend would make; how well his six feet of manly sinew would grace those pulpit stairs; how eloquently the reverend gentleman might expatiate on the burning sin of shrouding the light of such an intellect in the mists of n.i.g.g.e.rdom, only to see it snuffed out in darkness; how he might enlarge on what the black could do in elevating his race, either as "cullud" a.s.sistant to "Brother Pease"

at the Five-Points, or as co-laborer with Fred Dougla.s.s at abolition conventions, or, if that didn't _pay_, how, put into the minstrel business, he might run the white "troupes" off the track, and yield a liberal revenue to the "Cause of Freedom." As I thought of the probable effect of this last appeal, it seemed to me that the thing was already done, and that SCIP was FREE.

I got back from dreamland by the simple act of opening my eyes, and found myself still riding along in that Jersey wagon, over that heavy, sandy road, and drenched with the mists of that dreary December day. The reverie made, however, a deep impression on me, and I gave vent to it somewhat as follows:

"Colonel A---- tells me, Scip, that your mistress wants to sell you. Do you know what she asks?"

"She ax fifteen hundred dollar, ma.s.sa, but I an't worth dat now. n.i.g.g.e.r property's mighty low."

"What is your value now?"

"P'raps eight hundred, p'raps a thousand dollar, ma.s.sa."

"Would your mistress take a thousand for you?"

"Don't know, sar, but reckon she would. She'd be glad to get shut of me.

She don't like me on de plantation, 'cause she say de oder darkies tink too much ob me; and she don't like me in de city, 'cause she 'fraid I run away."

"Why afraid you'll runaway? Did you ever try to?"

"Try to! LOR, ma.s.sa, I neber taught ob such a ting--wouldn't gwo ef I could."

"But wouldn't you?" I asked, thinking he had conscientious scruples about running away; "wouldn't you if you could buy yourself, and go honestly, as a _free_ man?"

"Buy myself, sar!" he exclaimed in surprise; "buy _my own_ flesh and blood dat de LORD hissef gabe me! No, no! ma.s.sa; I'd likes to be free, but I'd neber do _dat_!"

"Why not do that?" I asked.

"'Cause 't would be owning dat de white folks hab a right to de brack; and 'cause, sar, if I war free I couldn't stay har."

"Why should you stay here? You have no wife nor child; why not go where the black man is respected and useful?"

"I'se 'spected and useful har, ma.s.sa. I hab no wife nor child, and dat make me feel, I s'pose, like as ef all de brack people war my chil'ren."

"But they are not your children; and you can be of no service to them.

At the North you might learn, and put your talents to some use."

"Sar," he replied, a singular enthusiasm lighting up his face, "de LORD, dat make me what I ar, put me har, and I must stay. Sometimes when tings look bery brack, and I feel a'most 'scouraged, I goes to HIM, and I say, 'LORD, I's ob no use, take me 'way; let me get fru wid dis; let me no more see de suffrin' and 'pression ob de pore cullud race;' den HE say to me, just so plain as I say it to you, 'Keep up good courage, Scipio, de time will come;'[C] and now, bless de LORD, de time am coming!"

"_What_ time is coming, Scipio?"

He gave me a quick, suspicious glance, but his face in a moment resumed its usual expression, as he replied: "I'se sure, ma.s.sa, dat I could trust you. I feel you am my friend, but I can't say no more."

"You need not, Scip--I can guess. What you have said is safe with me.

But let me counsel you--wait for the white man. Do not let your freedom come in blood!"

"It will come, ma.s.sa, as de LORD will. When HE war freed _de earth shook, and de vail ob de temple war rent in twain_!"

We said no more, but rode on in silence; the darky absorbed in his own reflections, I musing over the black volcano, whose m.u.f.fled echoes I then heard "away down South in Dixie."

We had ridden on for about an hour, when an opening in the trees disclosed a by-path, leading to a plantation. Following it for a short distance, we came upon a small clearing, in the midst of which, flanked by a ragged corn and potato patch, squatted a dilapidated, unpainted wooden building, a sort of "half-way house" between a hut and a shanty.

In its door-way, seated on a chair which wanted one leg and a back, was a suit of linsey-woolsey, adorned by enormous metal b.u.t.tons, and surmounted by a queer-looking headpiece that might have pa.s.sed for either a hat or an umbrella. I was at a loss to determine whether the object were a human being or a scarecrow, when, at the sound of our approach, the umbrella-like article lifted, and a pair of sunken eyes, a nose, and an enormous beard, disclosed themselves. Addressing myself to the singular figure, I inquired how far we were from our destination, and the most direct route to it.

"Wal, stranger," was the reply, "it's a right smart twenty mile to the Cunnel's, but I reckon ye'll get thar, if ye follow yer critter's nose, and ar good at swimming."