The Entailed Hat Part 26

"This yer bully, Judge," Jimmy said coolly, "started to take Prencess Anne the fust day, an' ole Meshach's Samson knocked him a sprawlin', an'

Meshach hisself finished him. To-day he starts in to lead off yon poor imbecile, Levin Dennis, and, as I expresses my opinion of it, he draws his knife on me; so I takes my foot, Judge, that you have seen me untie a knot with, and I spiles his wrist with it. Take care of his knife, Levin,--he's a pore creetur without it."

"We'll have this out, nope for nope, or may I take the morning-drop!"

growled the strange man.

"That kind of language ain't understood in honest company," Jimmy Phoebus said; "I s'pose it's thieves' lingo, used among your friends, or, maybe, big words you bully strangers with, when you want to cut a splurge. Now, as you've been licked by a n.i.g.g.e.r and kicked by a white man, maybe you can understand my language! Hark you, too, n.i.g.g.e.r buyer!

Do you know where I saw you first?"

For the first time a flash of fire came from the pungy captain's black cherries of eyes, and his huge broad face of swarthy color expressed its full Oriental character:

"The last time I saw you, Joe Johnson, was not a-lurking in Judge Custis's kitchen fur no good, nor a-insultin' of the Judge's t'other visitor, Milburn of the steeple-top: it was a-huggin' the whippin'-post on the public green of Georgetown, State of Delaware, an' the sheriff a-layin' of it over your back; an' after he sot you up in the pillory I took the rottenest egg I could git, an' I bust it right on the eye where that n.i.g.g.e.r bruised you yisterday!"

The oppressive silence, as Joe Johnson slunk back, desperate with rage, yet unable to deny, was broken by Jack Wonnell's unthinking interjection:

"Whoop, Jimmy! Hooraw for Prencess Anne!"

"An' why did I git that egg an' make you smell it, Joe Johnson? Because, by smoke! you was a stinkin' kidnapper, robbing of the pore free n.i.g.g.e.rs of their liberty, knowin' that they didn't carry no arms and couldn't make no good defense! That's your trade, an' it's the meanest an' most cowardly in the world. It's doin' what the Algerynes does in fair fighting. You're a fine American citizen, ain't you? I know your gang, and a b.l.o.o.d.y one it is, but you can't look a white man in the eye, because you're a thief and a coward!"

The h.e.l.lenic nature of the bay captain had never displayed itself to the Judge with this fulness, and he felt some natural admiration as he took Phoebus by the arm.

"Well, well!" said the Judge, "let him go now, Phoebus! Mr. Johnson, don't let me see you in Princess Anne again to-day. Continue your journey and disturb us no more, or I shall put criminal process upon you, and you see we have stout constables in Somerset."

As he led Phoebus around the corner of the bank, the Judge said:

"James, my wife is so sick that I must keep house with her this morning, and I want a little note left at the church for Mr. Tilghman. Will you take it?"

"Why, with pleasure, Judge," the nonchalant villager replied. "I don't look very handsome in the 'piscopal church, but I'll do a' arrand."

As the Judge wrote the note with his gold pencil on a leaf of his memorandum book, he said:

"James, did you identify that man yesterday?"

"Yes, I knowed him as soon as he come to the tavern. This mornin', seein' of him around town, I was afear'd Samson Hat would stumble on him, and the n.i.g.g.e.r buyer would kill him for yisterday's blow. Thinks I: 'Samson is too white a n.i.g.g.e.r to be killed that way, by smoke!' but the prejudice agin a n.i.g.g.e.r hittin' a white man is sich in this state that Joe Johnson, b.l.o.o.d.y as he is, would never have stretched hemp for Samson Hat; so I picked a quarrel with the n.i.g.g.e.r buyer to take the fight out of him before Samson should come. He won't fight n.o.body now in this town. _His_ hokey-pokey is done _yer_."

"You took a great risk, Phoebus. He is such an evil fellow in his resentments, that I let him hide and eat in my quarters for fear of some ill requital if I refused. That gang of Patty Cannon's is the curse of the Eastern Sh.o.r.e."

"And if you'll pardon a younger and a porer man, Judge, it's jest sich gentlemen as you that lets it go on. You politicians give them people 'munity, an' let 'em alone because they fight fur you in 'lection times an' air popular with foresters an' pore trash, because they persecutes n.i.g.g.e.rs an' treats to liquor. You know the laws is agin their actions on both sides of the Delaware line, but in Maryland they're a dead letter."

"You speak plain truth, James Phoebus, brave as your conduct. But the poor men must make a sentiment against these kidnappers, because among the ignorant poor they find their defenders and equals."

"Judge," the pungy captain said, "they'se a-makin' a pangymonum of all the destreak about Patty Cannon's. By smoke! it's a shame to liberty. In open day they lead free n.i.g.g.e.rs, men, wimmin, an' little children, too, to be sold, who's free as my mommy and your daughter."

Judge Custis thought painfully of the scant freedom his daughter now enjoyed. Jimmy Phoebus continued:

"Now yer, we're raising hokey-pokey about the Algerynes and the Trypollytins capturin' of a few Christian people an' sellin' of 'em to Turkey, an' about the Turkey people makin' slaves of the Christian Greek folks. Henry Clay is cuttin' a big splurge about it. Money is bein'

raised all over the country to send it to 'em. Commodo' Decatur was a big man for a-breakin' of it up. By smoke! they're sellin' more free people to death and h.e.l.l along Mason and Dixon's line, than up the whole buzzum of the Mediterranean Sea."

The brown-skinned speaker was more excited now than he had been during all the collision with Joe Johnson.

"Indeed, Phoebus, they have kidnapped several thousand people, the Philadelphia abolitionists say, but the reports must be exaggerated. The demand for negroes is so great, since the cotton-gin and the foreign markets have made cotton a great staple, and the direct importation of slaves from Africa has been stopped, that there is a great run for border-state negroes, and free colored people seldom are righted when they have been pulled across the line."

"They never are righted, Judge Custis! I'm ashamed of my native state.

Only a few years ago, when I was a boy, people around yer was a-freein'

of their n.i.g.g.e.rs, and it was understood that slavery would a-die out, an' everybody said, 'Let the evil thing go.' But n.i.g.g.e.rs began to go up high; they got to be wuth eight hunderd dollars whair they wasn't wuth two hunderd; and all the politicians begun to say: 'n.i.g.g.e.rs is not fit to be free. n.i.g.g.e.rs is the bulrush, or the bulwork, or bull-something of our nation.' And then kidnapping of free n.i.g.g.e.rs started, and the next thing they'll kidnap free American citizens!"

"Tut! tut! James! it will never go that far."

"Won't it? What did Joe Johnson say to me last night before the Washington Tavern? He said: 'I've sold whiter n.i.g.g.e.rs than you, myself.

I kin run you to market an' git my price for you!'"

The bay sailor took off his hat.

"Look at me!" he continued; "by smoke! look on my brown skin and black eyes an' coal black hair. Whair did they come from? They come from Greece, whair Leonidas an' Marky Bozarris and all them fellers came from: that's what my daddy said. He know'd better than me. I'm nothin'

but a pore Eastern Sh.o.r.e man sailing my little vessel, but I'm a free-born man, and I tell you, Judge, it's a dangerous time when nothing but his shade of color protects a free man."

"James Phoebus," the Judge said, gravely, "I hope you believe me when I say that I think all these things outrages, and they grow out of the greater outrage of slavery itself. We are being governed by new states, hatched in the Southwest from the alligator eggs of old slavery, that had grown into political and moral disrepute with us in Maryland and Virginia."

"There's no n.i.g.g.e.r in me," Phoebus said, putting on his hat, "but I have taken these hints about my looking like a n.i.g.g.e.r to heart, and I'll take a n.i.g.g.e.r's part when he is imposed on, as if he was some of the body and blood of my Lord Jesus. Now you hear it!"

"And brave enough you are to mean it, my honest fellow. So do my errand, and good-morning, James."

CHAPTER XVI.

BELL-CROWN MAN.

As the Judge and Phoebus had turned the corner of the bank Samson Hat appeared, driving down Princess Anne's broad main street a young white girl.

"There's the n.i.g.g.e.r that set my peep in limbo," muttered the negro dealer, "but even he shall go past to-day. This accursed town is packed agin me."

He took a long look at Samson, however, who mildly returned it in the most respectful manner, as if he had never seen the strange gentleman before. "And now, my pals," Joe Johnson said, turning to Levin Dennis and Jack Wonnell, "we will all three go down to the bay and I'll pervide the lush, and pay the soap while you ketch the tarrapin, an' let me sleep my nazy off."

"I'll go an' no mistake!" cried Jack Wonnell, who had been taking a drink of pump-water out of his bell-crown. "So will you, Levin."

Levin Dennis hesitated; "I want to tell my mother first," he said, "maybe she won't like me fur to go of a Sunday. She'll send Jimmy Phoebus after me."

Joe Johnson took a bag of gold from inside his waist-band, hanging by a loop there, and held up a piece of five before the boy's bright eyes:

"Yer, kid! That's yourn if you don't have no mother about it. Pike away with me, pig widgeon, an' find your boat, and I pay you this pash at sundown."

Levin's credulous eyes shone, and with one reluctant look towards his mother's cottage he led the way into the country.

Little was said as they walked an hour or more towards the west, the stranger apparently brooding upon his indignities, and twice pa.s.sing around the jug of brandy which Jack Wonnell was made to carry, and before noon they came to a considerable creek, out in which was anch.o.r.ed a small vessel bearing on her stern in illiterate, often inverted, letters the name: _Ellenora Dennis_.

"What's that glibe on yonder?" asked Johnson, pointing to the letters.