The Entailed Hat Part 44

"Johnson's a great factor hereabout," continued the military-looking man, bending his handsome eyes on the bay captain, as if there was a business secret between them, and peering at once mischievously and n.o.bly; "he makes the quotient to suit. He leaves the suttle large and never stints the cloff."

"He don't narry a feller down to the cloth he's got, sir?" a.s.sented Jimmy, dubiously.

"Why should he? His equation is simple: I suppose you know what it is."

"Not ezackly," answered Phoebus, p.r.i.c.king up his ears to learn.

"Well, it is force and cla.s.s sympathy against a dead quant.i.ty: laws which have no consignees, cattle which have no lawyer and no tongue, rights which have lapsed by their a.s.sertion being suspended, till demand and supply, like a pair of bulldogs, tear what is left to pieces. Armed with his _ca. sa._, my neighbor Johnson offsets everybody's _fi. fa._, serves his writ the first, and makes to gentlemen like you a satisfactory quotient. But he cuts no capers with Isaac and Jacob Cannon!"

"I expect now that you are Jacob Cannon?" remarked the tawny sailor, not having understood a word of what preceded. "If that's the case, I'm glad to know your name, and thank you for givin' me this lift."

By a bare nod, just intelligible, Mr. Cannon signified that the guess would do; and still meditating aloud in his small, grand way, continued:

"We let neighbor Johnson and his somewhat peculiar mother-in-law make such commerce as suits him, provided he studies to give us no inconvenience. That is his equation; with his quotient we have no concern other than our slight interest in his wastage, as when Madame Cannon rides down to change a bill and leaves an order for supplies--rum, chiefly, I believe. Gentlemen like you come into this country to deal, replevin, or what not, and we say to you all, 'Don't tread on us--that is all.' We shall not look into your parcels, nor lie awake of nights to hear alarms; but harm Isaac and Jacob Cannon one ha'pence and _levari facias, fi. fa.!_"

"And fee-fo-fum," e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Jimmy, cheerfully; "I've hearn it before."

Looking again with some curiosity at his companion, Phoebus saw that he was not beyond fifty years of age, of a spare, lofty figure--at least six feet four high--sitting straight and graceful as an Indian, his clothes well-tailored, his countenance and features both stern and refined; every feature perfected, and all keen without being hard or angular--and yet Jimmy did not like him. There seemed to have been made a commodore or a general--some one designed for deeds of chivalry and great philanthropy; and yet around and between the dancing eyes spider lines were drawn, as if the fine high brain of Jacob Cannon had put aside matters that matched it and meddled with nothing that ascended higher above the world than the long white bridge of his nose. His sentiments apparently fell no further towards his heart than that; his brain belonged to the bridge of his nose.

"Another Meshach Milburn, by smoke!" concluded Jimmy.

After a little pause Phoebus inquired into the character of the people in this apparently new region of country.

"The quotient of much misplanting and lawyering is the lands on the Nantic.o.ke," spoke the gray-nosed Apollo; "the piece of country directly before us, in the rear of my neighbor Johnson's cross-roads, was an old Indian reservation for seventy years, and so were three thousand acres to our right, on Broad Creek. The Indian is a bad factor to civilize his white neighbors; he does not know the luxury of the law, that grand contrivance to make the equation between the business man and the herd.

Ha, ha!"

Mr. Cannon chuckled as if he, at least, appreciated the law, and turned the fine horsy bridge of his nose, all gray with dancing eyelight, enjoyingly upon Mr. Phoebus.

"The Indians were long imposed upon, and when they went away, at the brink of the Revolutionary War, they left a demoralized white race; and others who moved in upon the deserted lands of the Nantic.o.kes were, if possible, more Indian than the Indians. This peninsula never produced a great Indian, but when Ebenezer Johnson settled on Broad Creek it possessed a greater savage than Tec.u.mseh. He took what he wanted and appealed to nature, like the Indian. He stole nothing; he merely took it. He served, with anything convenient, from his fists to a blunderbuss, his _fi. fa._ and his _ca. sa._ upon wondering but submissive mankind. Need I say that this was before the perfect day of Isaac and Jacob Cannon?"

"They would have socked it to him, I reckon," Jimmy exclaimed, consonantly.

Mr. Jacob Cannon gave a tender smile, such as the gray horse emits at the prospect of oats, and continued:

"Such was the multiplicand to make the future race. Here, too, raged the boundary-line debate between Penns and Calverts, with occasional raids and broken heads, and a n.o.ble suit in chancery of fifty years, till no man's t.i.tle was known, and, instead of improving their lands, our voluptuous predecessors improved chiefly their opportunities. You cut sundry cords of wood and hauled it to the landing, and Ebenezer Johnson coolly scowed it over to his paradise at the mouth of Broad Creek. You had a little parcel of negroes, but the British war-ships, in two successive wars, lay in the river mouth and beckoned them off. Having no interest in any certain property, the foresters of the Nantic.o.ke would rather trade with the enemy than fight for foolish ideas; and so this region was more than half Tory, and is still half pa.s.sive, the other half predatory. To neither half of such a quotient belongs the house of Isaac and Jacob Cannon!"

His nostrils swelled a trifle with military spirit, and he raised the bridge of his nose delicately, turning to observe his instinctive companion.

"If it's any harm I won't ask it," the easy-going mariner spoke, "but air you two Cannons ary kin to ole Patty Cannon?"

Mr. Cannon smiled.

"In Adam all sinned--there we may have been connected," he said. "The question you ask may one day be actionable, sir. The Cannons are a numerous people in our region, of fair substance, such as we have, but they showed nothing to vary the equation of subsistence here till there arose the mother of Isaac and Jacob Cannon. She was a remarkable woman; una.s.sisted, she procured the charter for Cannon's Ferry, and made the port settlement of that name by the importance her ferry acquired; and when she died there were found in her house nine hundred dollars in silver--for she never would take any paper money--the earnings of that sequestered ferry, to start her sons on their career. She knew the peculiar character of some of her neighbors--how lightly _meum_ and _tuum_ sat upon their fears or consciences--but she kept no guard except her own good gray eyes and dauntless heart over that acc.u.mulating pile of little sixpences, for there was but one spirit as bold as she in all this region of the world--"

"And that, I reckon," observed Jimmy Phoebus, "was ole Patty Cannon herself."

Mr. Jacob Cannon slightly bowed his head, and spoke aloud from an inner communion:

"Forgive me, mother, that I make the comparison! Thy frugal oil, that burned with pure and lonely widow's flame at Cannon's Ferry window, the traveller hailed with comfort in his heart, and blessed the enterprise.

But to compound the equation another unknown quant.i.ty of female force arose beside my mother's lamp. A certain young Cannon, distantly of our stock, must needs go see the world, and he returned with a fair demon of a bride, and settled, too, at Cannon's Ferry. He lived to see the wondrous serpent he had warmed in his arms, and died, they say, of the sting. But she lived on, and, shrinking back into the woods to a little farm my mother's sons rented to her, she lighted there a Jack-o'-the-lantern many a traveller has pursued who never returned to tell. With Ebenezer Johnson's progeny and her own siren sisters, who followed Madame Cannon to the Nantic.o.ke, the nucleus of a settlement began, and has existed for twenty years, that only the Almighty's _venire facias_ can explore."[2]

"That's my arrand, Jacob Cannon," quietly remarked Jimmy Phoebus. "I'm a pore man from Prencess Anne. If you took me for a n.i.g.g.e.r-dealer you did me as pore a compliment as when I asked if you was Patty Cannon's kin. But I have got just one gal to love and just one life to lose, an'

if G.o.d takes me thar, I'm a-goin' to Johnson's Cross-roads."

Mr. Jacob Cannon turned and examined his companion with some twinkling care, but showed no personal concern.

"Every man must be his own security, my dark-skinned friend, till he can find a bailsman. That place I never take--neither the debtor's nor the security. The firm of Isaac and Jacob Cannon allows no trespa.s.s, and further concern themselves not. But we are at the Nantic.o.ke."

"I'm obliged to you for the lift, Mr. Jacob Cannon," said Jimmy, springing down, "and hope you may never find it inconvenient to have let such a pack of wolves use your neighborhood to trespa.s.s on human natur."

CHAPTER XXIII.

TWIFORD'S ISLAND.

Some piles of wood and an old wharf were at the river-side, and a little scow, half filled with water, and with only a broken piece of paddle in it, was the only boat the pungy captain could find. The merchant's buggy was soon out of sight, and the wide, gray Nantic.o.ke, several hundred yards wide, and made wider by a broad river that flowed into it through low bluffs and levels immediately opposite, was receiving the strong shadows of approaching night, and the tide was running up it violent and deep.

Long lines of melancholy woods shut both these rivers in; an osprey suddenly struck the surface of the water, like a drowning man, and rose as if it had escaped from some demon in the flood; the silence following his plunge was deeper than ever, till a goatsucker, noiselessly making his zigzag chase, cried, as if out of eternal gloom, his solemn command to "_Whip_ poor Will." Those notes repeated--as by some slave ordering his brother to be lashed or one sympathetic soul in perdition made the time-caller to another's misery--floated on the evening light as if the oars of Charon echoed on the Styx, and broken hearts were crossing over.

Alone, unintimidated, but not altogether comfortable, Jimmy Phoebus proceeded to bail out the old scow, and wished he had accepted one of Jack Wonnell's hats to do the task, and, when he had finished it, the stars and clouds were manoeuvring around each other in the sky, with the clouds the more aggressive, and finally some drops of rain punctured the long, bare muscles of the inflowing tide, making a reticule of little pittings, like a net of beads on drifting women's tresses. As night advanced, a puffing something ascended the broad, black aisle of this forest river, and slowly the Norfolk steamboat rumbled past, with pa.s.sengers for the Philadelphia stage. Then silence drew a sheet of fog around herself and pa.s.sed into a cold torpor of repose, affected only by the waves that licked the sh.o.r.es with intermittent thirst.

The waterman, regretting a little that he had not taken his stand at Vienna, where human a.s.sistance might have been procured, and thinking that the poison airs might also afflict him with Meshach Milburn's complaints, fought sleep away till midnight, straining his eyes and ears ever and anon for signs of some sail; but nothing drew near, and he had insensibly closed his lids and might have soon been in deep sleep, but that he suddenly heard, between his dreams and this world, something like a little baby moaning in the night.

He sat up in the damp scow, where he had been lying, and listened with all his senses wide open, and once again the cry was wafted upon the river zephyrs, and before it died away the sailor's paddle was in the water, and his frail, awkward vessel was darting across the tide.

He saw, in the black night, what none but a sailor's eyes would have seen, a thing not visible, but divined, coming along on the bosom of the river; and his ears saw it the clearer as that little cry continued--now stopped, now stifled, now rising, now nearly piercing; and then there was a growl, momentary and loud, and a rattle as of feet over wood, and a stroke or thud, or heavy concussion, and then a white thing rose up against the universal ink and rushed on the little scow, sucking water as it came--the cat-boat under full sail.

Phoebus had paddled for the opposite sh.o.r.e of the river to prevent the object of his quest escaping up the Northwest Fork, yet to be in its path if it beat up the main fork, and, by a piece of instinctive calculation, he had run nearly under the cat-boat bows.

"Ahoy, there!" cried Jimmy, standing up in his tipsy little skiff; "ahoy the _Ellenory Dennis!_ I'm a-comin' aboard."

And with this, the paddle still in his hand, and his knees and feet nearly sentient in their providence of uses, the sailor threw himself upon the low gunwale, and let it glide through his palms till he could see the man at the helm.

There was no light to be called so, but the helmsman was yet perceived by the sailor's experienced eyes, and he grappled the gunwale firmer, and, preparing to swing himself on board, shouted hoa.r.s.ely,

"You Levin Dennis, I see you, by smoke! You know Jimmy Phoebus is your friend, an' come out of this Pangymonum an' stop a-breakin' of your mother's heart! Oh, I see you, my son!"

If he did see Levin Dennis, Levin did not see Jimmy Phoebus, nor apparently hear him, but stood motionless at the helm as a frozen man, looking straight on in the night. The rigging made a little flapping, the rudder creaked on its hooks, but every human sound was still as the grave now, and the boy at the helm seemed petrified and deaf and blind.

The pungy captain's temper rose, his superst.i.tion not being equal to that of most people, and he cried again,

"You're a disgrace to the woman that bore you. h.e.l.l's a-waitin' for your pore tender body an' soul. Heave ahoy an' let drop that gaff, an' take me aboard, Levin!"

Still silent and pa.s.sive as a stone, the youthful figure at the helm did not seem to breathe, and the cat-boat cut the water like a fish-hawk.

A flash of bright fire lighted up the vessel's side, a loud pistol-shot rang out, and the sailor's hands loosened from the gunwale and clutched at the air, and he felt the black night fall on him as if he had pulled down its ebony columns upon his head.