The Entailed Hat Part 45

He knew no more for hours, till he felt himself lying in cold water and saw the gray morning coming through tree-boughs over his head. He had a thirsty feeling and pain somewhere, and for a few minutes did not move, but lay there on his shoulder, holding to something and guessing what it might be, and where he might be making his bed in this chilly autumn dawn.

His hand was clutching the a-stern plank of the old scow, and was so stiff he could not for some time open it. The scow was aground upon a marshy sh.o.r.e, in which some large trees grew, and were the fringes of a woods that deepened farther back.

"By smoke!" muttered Jimmy, "if yer ain't hokey-pokey. But I reckon I ain't dead, nohow."

With this he lifted the other hand, that had been stretched beneath his head, and was also numb with cramp and cold, and it was full of blood.

"Well," said Jimmy, "that feller did hit me; but, if he'll lend me his pistol, I'll fire a straighter slug than his'n. I wonder where it is."

Feeling around his head, the captain came to a raw spot, the touch of which gave him acute pain, and made the blood flow freshly as he withdrew his hand, and he could just speak the words, "Water, or I'll--"

when he swooned away.

The sun was up and shining cheerily in the tree-tops as Phoebus, who was its name-bearer, recovered his senses again, and he bathed his face, still lying down, and tore a piece of his raiment off for a bandage, and, by the mirror of a still, green pool of water, examined his wound, which was in the fleshy part of his cheek--a little groove or gutter, now choked with almost dried blood, where the ball had ploughed a line.

It had probably struck a bone, but had not broken it, and this had stunned him.

"I was so ugly before that Ellenory wouldn't more than half look at me,"

Jimmy mused, "an' now, I 'spect, she'll never kiss that air cheek."

He then bandaged his cheek roughly, sitting up, and took a survey of the scenery.

The river was here a full quarter of a mile wide, on the opposite sh.o.r.e bluffy, and in places bold, but, on the side where Phoebus had drifted with the tide, clutching his old scow with mortal grip, there extended a point of level woods and marsh or "cripple," as if by the action of some back-water, and this low ground appeared to have a considerable area, and was nowhere tilled or fenced, or gave any signs of being visited.

But the opposite or northern sh.o.r.e was quite otherwise; there the river had a wide bend or hollow to receive two considerable creeks, and changed its course almost abruptly from west to southwest, giving a grand view of its wide bosom for the distance of more than two miles into Maryland; and the prospect was closed in that direction by a whitish-looking something, like lime or sh.e.l.l piles, standing against the background of pale blue woods and bluffs.

Right opposite the spot where Phoebus had been stranded, a cleared farm came out to the Nantic.o.ke, affording a front of only a single field, on the crest of a considerable sand-bluff--elevations looking magnified here, where nature is so level; and at one end of this field, which was planted in corn that was now clinging dry to the naked stalks, an old lane descended to a sh.e.l.l-paved wharf of a stumpy, square form; and almost at the other, or western, end of the clearing stood a respectable farm-house of considerable age, with a hipped roof and three queer dormer windows slipping down the steeper half below, and two chimneys, not built outside of the house, as was the general fashion, but naturally rising out of the old English-brick gables. All between the gables was built of wood; a porch of one story occupied nearly half the centre of that side of the house facing the river; and to the right, against the house and behind it, were kitchen, smoke-house, corn-cribs, and other low tenements, in picturesque medley; while to the left crouched an old, low building on the water's edge, looking like a brandy-still or a small warehouse. The road from the wharf and lane pa.s.sed along a beach, and partly through the river water, to enter a gate between this shed and the dwelling; and from the garden or lawn, on the bluff before the latter, arose two tall and elegant trees, a honey-locust and a stalwart mulberry.

"Now, I never been by this place before," Jimmy Phoebus muttered, "but, by smoke! yon house looks to me like Betty Twiford's wharf, an', to save my life, I can't help thinkin' yon white spots down this side of the river air Sharptown. If that's the case, which state am I in?"

He rose to his feet, bailed the scow, which was nearly full of water, and began to paddle along the sh.o.r.e, and, seeing something white, he landed and parted the bushes, and found it to be a stone of a bluish marble, bearing on one side the letter M, and on the other the letter P, and a royal crown was also carved upon it.

"Yer's one o' Lord Baltimore's boundary stones," Phoebus exclaimed.

"Now see the rascality o' them kidnappers! Yon house, I know, is Twiford's, because it's a'most on the state-line, but, I'm ashamed to say, it's a leetle in Maryland. And that lane, coming down to the wharf, is my way to Joe Johnson's Pangymonum at his cross-roads."

A sound, as of some one singing, seemed to come from the woods near by, and Phoebus, listening, concluded that it was farther along the water, so he paddled softly forward till a small cove or pool led up into the swamp, and its sh.o.r.es nowhere offered a dry landing; yet there were recent foot-marks deeply trodden in the bog, and disclosed up the slope into the woods, and from their direction seemed to come the mysterious chanting.

"My head's b.l.o.o.d.y and I'm wet as a musk-rat, so I reckon I ain't afraid of gittin' a little muddy," and with this the navigator stepped from the scow in swamp nearly to his middle, and pulled himself up the slope by main strength.

"I believe my soul this yer is a island," Jimmy remarked; "a island surrounded with mud, that's wuss to git to than a water island."

The tall trees increased in size as he went on and entered a n.o.ble grove of pines, through whose roar, like an organ accompanied by a human voice, the singing was heard nearer and nearer, and, following the track of previous feet, which had almost made a path, Phoebus came to a s.p.a.ce where an axe had laid the smaller bushes low around a large loblolly pine that spread its branches like a roof only a few feet from the ground; and there, fastened by a chain to the trunk, which allowed her to go around and around the tree, and tread a nearly bare place in the pine droppings or "shats," sat a black woman, singing in a long, weary, throat-sore wail. Jimmy listened to a few lines:

"Deep-en de woun' dy han's 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."

A little negro child, perhaps three years old, was lying asleep on the ground at the woman's feet, in an old tattered gray blanket that might have been discarded from a stable. Near the child was a wooden box, in which were a coa.r.s.e loaf of corn-bread and some strips of bacon, and a wooden trough, hollowed out of a log, contained water. The woman's face was scratched and bruised, and, as she came to some dental sounds in her chant, her teeth were revealed, with several freshly missing in front, and her lips were swollen and the gums blistered and raw.

She glanced up as Phoebus came in sight, looked at him a minute in blank curiosity, as if she did not know what kind of animal he was, and then continued her song, wearily, as if she had been singing it for days, and her mind had gone into it and was out of her control. As she moved her feet from time to time, the chain rattled upon her ankles.

"Well," said Jimmy, "if this ain't Pangymonum, I reckon I'll find it at Johnson's Cross-roads! Git up thar, gal, an' let me see what ails you."

The woman rose mechanically, still singing in the shrill, cracked, weary drone, and, as she rose, the baby awoke and began to cry, and she stooped and took it up, and, patting it with her hands, sang on, as if she would fall asleep singing, but could not.

The chain, strong and rusty, had been very recently welded to her feet by a blacksmith; the fresh rivet attested that, and there were also pieces of charcoal in the pine strewings, as if fire had been brought there for smith's uses. Jimmy Phoebus took hold of the chain and examined it link by link till it depended from a powerful staple driven to the heart of the pine-tree; though rusty, it was perfect in every part, and the condition of the staple showed that it was permanently retained in its position, as if to secure various and successive persons, while the staple itself had been driven above the reach of the hands, as by a man standing on some platform or on another's shoulders.

Phoebus took the chain in his short, powerful arms, and, giving a little run from the root of the tree, threw all the strength of his compact, heavy body into a jerk, and let his weight fall upon it, but did not produce the slightest impression.

"There's jess two people can unfasten this chain," exclaimed Jimmy, blowing hard and kneading his palms, after two such exertions, "one of em's a blacksmith and t'other's a woodchopper. Gal, how did you git yer?"

The woman, a young and once comely person of about twenty-eight years of age, sang on a moment as if she did not understand the question, till Phoebus repeated it with a kinder tone:

"Pore, abused creatur, tell me as your friend! I ain't none of these kidnappers. Git your pore, scattered wits together an tell a friend of all women an' little childern how he kin help you, fur time's worth a dollar a second, an' b.l.o.o.d.y vultures are nigh by. Speak, Mary!"

The universal name seemed timely to this woman; she stopped her chanting and burst into tears.

"My husband brought me here," she said, between her long sobs. "He sold me. I give him everything I had and loved him, too, and he sold me--me and my baby."

"I reckon you don't belong fur down this way, Mary? You don't talk like it."

"No, sir; I belong to Philadelphia. I was a free woman and a widow; my husband left me a little money and a little house and this child; another man come and courted me, a han'some mulatto man, almost as white as you. He told me he had a farm in Delaware, and wanted me to be his wife; he promised me so much and was so anxious about it, that I listened to him. Oh, he was a beautiful talker, and I was lonesome and wanted love. I let him sell my house and give him the money, and started a week ago to come to my new home. Oh, he did deceive me so; he said he loved me dearly."

She began to cry again, and her mind seemed to wander, for the next sentence was disconnected. Jimmy took the baby in his arms and kissed it without any scruples, and the child's large, black eyes looked into his as if he might be its own father, while he dandled it tenderly.

"The foxes has come an' barked at me two nights," said the woman; "they wanted the bacon, I 'spect. The water-snakes has crawled around here in the daytime, and the buzzards flew right down before me and looked up, as if they thought I ought to be dead. But I wasn't afraid: that man I give my love to was so much worse than them, that I just sung and let them look at me."

"You say he sold you, Mary?"

The woman rubbed her weary eyes and slowly recollected where she had left off.

"We moved our things on a vessel to Delaware, and come up a creek to a little town in the marshes, and there we started for my husband's farm.

He said we had come to it in the night. I couldn't tell, but I saw a house in the woods, and was so tired I went to sleep with my baby there, and in the night I found men in the room, and one of them, a white man, was tying my feet."

A crow cawed with a sound of awe in the pine tops, and squirrels were running tamely all round about as she hesitated.

"I thought then of the kidnappers of Delaware, for I had heard about them, and I jumped out of bed and fought for my life. They knocked me down and the rope around my feet tripped me up; but I fought with my teeth after my hands was tied, too, and I bit that white man's knees, and then he picked up a fire-shovel, or something of iron, and knocked my teeth out. My last hope was almost gone when I saw my husband coming in, and I cried to him, 'Save me! save me, darling!' He had a rope in his hand, and, before I could understand it, he had slipped it over my neck and choked me."

"Your own husband? I can't believe it, to save my life!"

"I didn't believe it, neither, till I heard him say, when they loosened the slipknot that had strangled me--the voice was his I had trusted so much; I never could forget it!--'Eben,' he said, 'I've took down every mole and spot on her body and can swear to' em, for I've learned 'em by heart, and you won't have no trouble a-sellin' her, as she can't testify."

"The imp of Pangymonum!" Jimmy cried. "He had married you to note down your marks, and by' em swear you to be a slave!"

"The white man tried to sell me to a farmer, and then I told what I had heard them say. He believed me, and told them the mayor of Philadelphia had a reward out for them, for kidnappin' free people, already. Then they talked together--a little scared they was--and tied me again, and brought me on a cart through the woods to the river and fetched me here, and chained me, and told me if I ever said I was free, to another man, they meant to sell my baby and to drown me in the river."

She finished with a chilly tremor and a low wail like an infant, but the sailor pa.s.sed her baby into her arms to engage her, and said:

"The Lord is still a-countin' of his sparrows, or I wouldn't have been on this arrand, by smoke! To drift yer, hangin' senseless to that ole scow, must have been to save you, Mary. This is a island where they chains up property, I reckon, that is bein' follered up too close.

Time's very precious, Mary, but I've got a sailor's knife yer, an' I'll stay to cut the staple out o' this ole pine if they come an' kill me.

You take an' wash my face off outen that water-trough while I bite a bit of the bacon."