CHAPTER XXIII.
TWIFORD'S ISLAND.
Some piles of wood and an old wharf were at the river-side, and a littlescow, half filled with water, and with only a broken piece of paddle init, was the only boat the pungy captain could find. The merchant's buggywas soon out of sight, and the wide, gray Nanticoke, several hundredyards wide, and made wider by a broad river that flowed into it throughlow bluffs and levels immediately opposite, was receiving the strongshadows of approaching night, and the tide was running up it violent anddeep.
Long lines of melancholy woods shut both these rivers in; an ospreysuddenly struck the surface of the water, like a drowning man, and roseas if it had escaped from some demon in the flood; the silencefollowing 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 bysome slave ordering his brother to be lashed or one sympathetic soul inperdition made the time-caller to another's misery--floated on theevening light as if the oars of Charon echoed on the Styx, and brokenhearts were crossing over.
Alone, unintimidated, but not altogether comfortable, Jimmy Phoebusproceeded to bail out the old scow, and wished he had accepted one ofJack Wonnell's hats to do the task, and, when he had finished it, thestars and clouds were manoeuvring around each other in the sky, withthe clouds the more aggressive, and finally some drops of rain puncturedthe long, bare muscles of the inflowing tide, making a reticule oflittle pittings, like a net of beads on drifting women's tresses. Asnight advanced, a puffing something ascended the broad, black aisle ofthis forest river, and slowly the Norfolk steamboat rumbled past, withpassengers for the Philadelphia stage. Then silence drew a sheet of fogaround herself and passed into a cold torpor of repose, affected only bythe waves that licked the shores with intermittent thirst.
The waterman, regretting a little that he had not taken his stand atVienna, where human assistance might have been procured, and thinkingthat the poison airs might also afflict him with Meshach Milburn'scomplaints, fought sleep away till midnight, straining his eyes and earsever and anon for signs of some sail; but nothing drew near, and he hadinsensibly closed his lids and might have soon been in deep sleep, butthat he suddenly heard, between his dreams and this world, somethinglike a little baby moaning in the night.
He sat up in the damp scow, where he had been lying, and listened withall his senses wide open, and once again the cry was wafted upon theriver zephyrs, and before it died away the sailor's paddle was in thewater, and his frail, awkward vessel was darting across the tide.
He saw, in the black night, what none but a sailor's eyes would haveseen, a thing not visible, but divined, coming along on the bosom of theriver; and his ears saw it the clearer as that little cry continued--nowstopped, now stifled, now rising, now nearly piercing; and then therewas a growl, momentary and loud, and a rattle as of feet over wood, anda stroke or thud, or heavy concussion, and then a white thing rose upagainst the universal ink and rushed on the little scow, sucking wateras it came--the cat-boat under full sail.
Phoebus had paddled for the opposite shore of the river to prevent theobject of his quest escaping up the Northwest Fork, yet to be in itspath if it beat up the main fork, and, by a piece of instinctivecalculation, he had run nearly under the cat-boat bows.
"Ahoy, there!" cried Jimmy, standing up in his tipsy little skiff; "ahoythe _Ellenory Dennis!_ I'm a-comin' aboard."
And with this, the paddle still in his hand, and his knees and feetnearly sentient in their providence of uses, the sailor threw himselfupon the low gunwale, and let it glide through his palms till he couldsee the man at the helm.
There was no light to be called so, but the helmsman was yet perceivedby the sailor's experienced eyes, and he grappled the gunwale firmer,and, preparing to swing himself on board, shouted hoarsely,
"You Levin Dennis, I see you, by smoke! You know Jimmy Phoebus is yourfriend, an' come out of this Pangymonum an' stop a-breakin' of yourmother's heart! Oh, I see you, my son!"
If he did see Levin Dennis, Levin did not see Jimmy Phoebus, norapparently 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 thegrave now, and the boy at the helm seemed petrified and deaf and blind.
The pungy captain's temper rose, his superstition not being equal tothat of most people, and he cried again,
"You're a disgrace to the woman that bore you. Hell's a-waitin' for yourpore tender body an' soul. Heave ahoy an' let drop that gaff, an' takeme aboard, Levin!"
Still silent and passive as a stone, the youthful figure at the helm didnot 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-shotrang out, and the sailor's hands loosened from the gunwale and clutchedat the air, and he felt the black night fall on him as if he had pulleddown its ebony columns upon his head.
He knew no more for hours, till he felt himself lying in cold water andsaw the gray morning coming through tree-boughs over his head. He had athirsty feeling and pain somewhere, and for a few minutes did not move,but lay there on his shoulder, holding to something and guessing what itmight be, and where he might be making his bed in this chilly autumndawn.
His hand was clutching the a-stern plank of the old scow, and was sostiff he could not for some time open it. The scow was aground upon amarshy shore, in which some large trees grew, and were the fringes of awoods that deepened farther back.
"By smoke!" muttered Jimmy, "if yer ain't hokey-pokey. But I reckon Iain't dead, nohow."
With this he lifted the other hand, that had been stretched beneath hishead, 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 hispistol, 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 ofwhich gave him acute pain, and made the blood flow freshly as hewithdrew 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, whowas 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 hadstunned 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 thescenery.
The river was here a full quarter of a mile wide, on the opposite shorebluffy, and in places bold, but, on the side where Phoebus had driftedwith the tide, clutching his old scow with mortal grip, there extended apoint of level woods and marsh or "cripple," as if by the action of someback-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 shore was quite otherwise; there the riverhad a wide bend or hollow to receive two considerable creeks, andchanged its course almost abruptly from west to southwest, giving agrand view of its wide bosom for the distance of more than two milesinto Maryland; and the prospect was closed in that direction by awhitish-looking something, like lime or shell piles, standing againstthe background of pale blue woods and bluffs.
Right opposite the spot where Phoebus had been stranded, a clearedfarm came out to the Nanticoke, affording a front of only a singlefield, on the crest of a considerable sand-bluff--elevations lookingmagnified 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 shell-paved wharf of a stumpy, square form;and almost at the other, or western, end of the clearing stood arespectable farm-house of considerable age, with a hipped roof and threequeer dormer windows slipping down the steeper half below, and twochimneys, not built outside of the house, as was the general fashion,but naturally rising out of the old English-brick gables. All betweenthe gables was built of wood; a porch of one story occupied nearly halfthe 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 leftcrouched an old, low building on the water's edge, looking like abrandy-still or a small warehouse. The road from the wharf and lanepassed along a beach, and partly through the river water, to enter agate between this shed and the dwelling; and from the garden or lawn, onthe bluff before the latter, arose two tall and elegant trees, ahoney-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 ofthe 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 shore, and, seeing something white, helanded and parted the bushes, and found it to be a stone of a bluishmarble, 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, isTwiford's, because it's a'most on the state-line, but, I'm ashamed tosay, 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 theswamp, and its shores nowhere offered a dry landing; yet there wererecent foot-marks deeply trodden in the bog, and disclosed up the slopeinto the woods, and from their direction seemed to come the mysteriouschanting.
"My head's bloody and I'm wet as a musk-rat, so I reckon I ain't afraidof gittin' a little muddy," and with this the navigator stepped from thescow in swamp nearly to his middle, and pulled himself up the slope bymain strength.
"I believe my soul this yer is a island," Jimmy remarked; "a islandsurrounded 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 noble groveof pines, through whose roar, like an organ accompanied by a humanvoice, the singing was heard nearer and nearer, and, following the trackof previous feet, which had almost made a path, Phoebus came to aspace where an axe had laid the smaller bushes low around a largeloblolly pine that spread its branches like a roof only a few feet fromthe ground; and there, fastened by a chain to the trunk, which allowedher to go around and around the tree, and tread a nearly bare place inthe 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 theground at the woman's feet, in an old tattered gray blanket that mighthave been discarded from a stable. Near the child was a wooden box, inwhich were a coarse loaf of corn-bread and some strips of bacon, and awooden trough, hollowed out of a log, contained water. The woman's facewas scratched and bruised, and, as she came to some dental sounds in herchant, 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 inblank curiosity, as if she did not know what kind of animal he was, andthen continued her song, wearily, as if she had been singing it fordays, and her mind had gone into it and was out of her control. As shemoved 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 atJohnson's Cross-roads! Git up thar, gal, an' let me see what ails you."
The woman rose mechanically, still singing in the shrill, cracked, wearydrone, and, as she rose, the baby awoke and began to cry, and shestooped and took it up, and, patting it with her hands, sang on, as ifshe would fall asleep singing, but could not.
The chain, strong and rusty, had been very recently welded to her feetby a blacksmith; the fresh rivet attested that, and there were alsopieces of charcoal in the pine strewings, as if fire had been broughtthere for smith's uses. Jimmy Phoebus took hold of the chain andexamined it link by link till it depended from a powerful staple drivento the heart of the pine-tree; though rusty, it was perfect in everypart, and the condition of the staple showed that it was permanentlyretained in its position, as if to secure various and successivepersons, while the staple itself had been driven above the reach of thehands, as by a man standing on some platform or on another's shoulders.
Phoebus took the chain in his short, powerful arms, and, giving alittle run from the root of the tree, threw all the strength of hiscompact, heavy body into a jerk, and let his weight fall upon it, butdid 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 ofem's a blacksmith and t'other's a woodchopper. Gal, how did you gityer?"
The woman, a young and once comely person of about twenty-eight years ofage, sang on a moment as if she did not understand the question, tillPhoebus repeated it with a kinder tone:
"Pore, abused creatur, tell me as your friend! I ain't none of thesekidnappers. Git your pore, scattered wits together an tell a friend ofall women an' little childern how he kin help you, fur time's worth adollar a second, an' bloody vultures are nigh by. Speak, Mary!"
The universal name seemed timely to this woman; she stopped her chantingand burst into tears.
"My husband brought me here," she said, between her long sobs. "He soldme. I give him everything I had and loved him, too, and he sold me--meand my baby."
"I reckon you don't belong fur down this way, Mary? You don't talk likeit."
"No, sir; I belong to Philadelphia. I was a free woman and a widow; myhusband 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 whiteas you. He told me he had a farm in Delaware, and wanted me to be hiswife; he promised me so much and was so anxious about it, that Ilistened to him. Oh, he was a beautiful talker, and I was lonesome andwanted love. I let him sell my house and give him the money, and starteda week ago to come to my new home. Oh, he did deceive me so; he said heloved me dearly."
She began to cry again, and her mind seemed to wander, for the nextsentence was disconnected. Jimmy took the baby in his arms and kissed itwithout any scruples, and the child's large, black eyes looked into hisas 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; "theywanted the bacon, I 'spect. The water-snakes has crawled around here inthe 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 Igive my love to was so much worse than them, that I just sung and letthem look at me."
"You say he sold you, Mary?"
The woman rubbed her weary eyes and slowly recollected where she hadleft off.
"We moved our things on a vessel to Delaware, and come up a creek to alittle 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 ahouse 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 on
e of them, a white man,was tying my feet."
A crow cawed with a sound of awe in the pine tops, and squirrels wererunning tamely all round about as she hesitated.
"I thought then of the kidnappers of Delaware, for I had heard aboutthem, and I jumped out of bed and fought for my life. They knocked medown and the rope around my feet tripped me up; but I fought with myteeth 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 knockedmy teeth out. My last hope was almost gone when I saw my husband comingin, and I cried to him, 'Save me! save me, darling!' He had a rope inhis hand, and, before I could understand it, he had slipped it over myneck 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 loosenedthe slipknot that had strangled me--the voice was his I had trusted somuch; I never could forget it!--'Eben,' he said, 'I've took down everymole and spot on her body and can swear to' em, for I've learned 'em byheart, and you won't have no trouble a-sellin' her, as she can'ttestify."
"The imp of Pangymonum!" Jimmy cried. "He had married you to note downyour 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 hadheard them say. He believed me, and told them the mayor of Philadelphiahad a reward out for them, for kidnappin' free people, already. Thenthey talked together--a little scared they was--and tied me again, andbrought 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 thesailor passed her baby into her arms to engage her, and said:
"The Lord is still a-countin' of his sparrows, or I wouldn't have beenon this arrand, by smoke! To drift yer, hangin' senseless to that olescow, must have been to save you, Mary. This is a island where theychains 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'llstay 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 bitof the bacon."
He took the child again and amused it while the woman carefully cleanedhis wound and rebandaged it so that he could breathe and see and eat,though the cotton folds wrapped in much of his face like a mask. He thenexamined the chain again, especially where it was rivetted at the feet,and lifted a large iron ball weighing several pounds, which was alsoaffixed to her ankle, so that she could not climb the tree. Her ankle hefound blistered by the red-hot rivet being smithed so barbarously closeto the flesh.
"Don't leave me, oh! don't leave me here to die," the woman pleaded, ashe started into the woods.
"I'll stay by you an' we'll die together, if we must; but it's not myidee to die at all, Mary. I'm goin' to bring that air scow ashore whileI cut a hickory, if I can find one, to break this yer chain."
Plunging again into the mud nearly to his waist, Phoebus pulled thescow up into the woods, and had barely concealed himself when he sawcome out of the creek below Twiford's house a cat-boat like the_Ellenora Dennis_, and stand towards the island in the cripple.
"The tide's agin' em, an' they must make a tack to get yer," Jimmymuttered; "but I'm afraid this knife will have to go to the heart ofsome son of Pangymonum in ten minutes, or Ellenory Dennis never agin bepestered by her ugly lover."
He was seized with a certain frenzy of strength and discernment at thedanger he was in, and, as he carried the scow onward and across thewoodland island, heavy as it was, he also noted a single small hickorytree on that farther margin, and threw himself against it and bent itdown, and plunged his knife into the straining fibres so that itcrackled and splintered in his hand. He leaped to the tree and scaled itas he had often climbed a mast, and he thrust the sapling under thestaple, trimming the point down with the knife as he clutched the treeby his knees, and then, catching the young hickory like a lever, hedropped down the pine trunk and got his shoulder under the sapling andbrought the weight of his body desperately against it. The staple bentupward in the tree, but did not loosen.
At that instant the scraping of a boat upon the mud was heard, and theblack woman fell upon her knees.
"Pray, but do it soft," Jimmy whispered; "an' not a cry from the child,or there'll be a murder!"
He had rapidly trimmed the hickory stem of its branches while he spoke,so that it could penetrate the arborage of the tree from above, andclimbing higher, like a cat, he worked the point of the lever downwardsinto the now crooked staple, and threw himself out of the tree againstthe sapling, which bent like a bow nearly double, but would not break,and, as the staple yielded and flew out, the chain and the delivererfell together on the soft pine litter.
"Hark!" exclaimed a voice through the woods.
"What was it?" asked another voice.
"Come!" Phoebus murmured, and gathered together the woman, the child,and the chain and ball, and stepped, long and silent as a rabbit'sleaps, through the awe-hushed pines, carrying the whole burden on hisshoulders.
He sat them in the scow, which sank to the edges, and, covered by aprotruding point of woods, pushed off into the deep river, yet guidingthe frail vessel in to the sides of the stream, away from the influenceof the out-running tide. As the scow turned the first crease or elbow inthe river, it began to sink.
"If you make a sound you are a slave fur life," whispered the waterman,as he slipped overboard and began to swim, with his hand upon the stern.As he did this, straining every muscle of his countenance to keepafloat, the wound in his cheek began to bleed again, and he felt hisstrength going. Down, down he began to settle, till the water reachedhis nostrils, and the woman heard him sigh as he was sinking:
"I'd do it--an' die--agin--fur--Ellenory. God bless her!"
The scow, now full of water, turned upside down, and threw mother andchild into the stream, and the child was gone beneath the surface beforethe woman could catch herself upon a sunken branch of an imbedded tree;and, as she gasped there, the body of the pungy captain swept past herand she caught him by the hair, and he clutched her with the drowninginstinct, and down they went together, like husband and wife, innature's contempt of distinctions between living worms.
They went down to the very bottom, but not to drown; for the old tree,having fallen where it grew in other years, was sustained upon itslimbs, and made an invisible yet sure pathway to the shore. The longchain and the iron ball fettered to the colored woman's foot, however,deprived her for a few moments of all power to step along the slippery,submerged trunk, and, with her soul full of agony for her child, whichshe no longer saw, she was about to let go of her deliverer's body andthrow herself also into the river, to die with them, when the old scow,having emptied itself of the water, reappeared at the surface and struckthe woman a buoyant blow that altered the course of her thought.
"Pore, brave man," the woman gasped. "He's got a wife, maybe. He said,'God bless her,' an' he give his life for a poor creature like me. Godhas took my baby. I can't do nothing for it now, but maybe I can savethis man's life before I die."
Indifferent to her personal fate, she drew intelligence from her spiritof sacrifice, which is the only thing better than learning. She pushedthe scow down and under Phoebus with her remaining hand, till itrelieved her of a portion of the weight of his body, and rose up,half-bearing the bronze-faced sailor's form, and animating her generouspurpose with the honest and happy smile he wore upon his face, even inthe vestibule of the eternal palace. Then, gathering the long meshes ofthe iron chain up from its termination at her feet, she threw the longerportion of it into the scow, so that it no longer became entangled inthe cross-branches and knots below, and she could lift also the ironball sufficiently to glide her feet along the tree.
With pain and difficulty, lessened by self-forgetfulness, she pushed thescow and the body to the foot of the tree,
and, feeling around its oldroots for further support, the red-eyed terrapins arose and swam aroundher, disturbed in their possessions; but she feared no reptiles anymore, since Death, the mighty crocodile, had eaten the babe that she hadnursed but this morning.
She had intelligent remembrance enough to think of all the precautionsher deliverer had taken, and, when she had dragged his body on the shoreinto the dense, scrubby woods, she also drew out the little scow andheaped some dead brush upon it, and had scarcely concealed herself whenshe heard voices from the river, and the report of a sail swung aroundupon its boom, and of feet upon a deck. The voices said:
"If she's got off to Delaware, Joe Johnson won't have long to stay onhis visit; for all the beaks will gather fur him an' be started by JohnM. Clayton."
"I'm sorry fur Joe," answered another voice; "he hoped to make one morebig scoop this trip, an' quit the Corners fur good."
"Let us sail by ole Ebenezer Johnson's roost at Broad Creek mouth, an'peep up both forks of the river," said the other voice, receding; "it'sonly a mile and a half. If we discover nothin', we'll run down the riverand inquire at the landings as fur as Vienny."
The colored woman now worked with all her strength to revive theinsensible sailor, rolling him, rubbing his body till her elbows seemedalmost to be dropping off, and then rubbing his great, broad breast withher head and face and neck. She breathed into his mouth the breathheaven vouchsafed to Hagar as bountifully as to Sarah, and, wringing outportions of her garments and hanging them at sunny exposures to dry, shesubstituted them, in her exhausted intervals, for the wet clothing ofthe man; and as she worked, with a hollow, desolate heart, she sobbed:
"Lord, gi' me this man's life! O Lord, that took my chile, I will havethis life back!"
Crying and weeping, fainting and laboring, the moments, it seemed thevery hours, ran by and still he did not waken; and still, with all thatnoble strength that makes the fields of white men grow and blossom underthe negro's unthanked toil, the widow and childless one fought on forthis cold lump of brother nature.
He warmed, he breathed, he groaned, he spoke!
His voice was like a happy sigh, as of one disturbed near the end of acomforting morning nap in summer:
"You thar, Mary?"
He stared around with difficulty, his wounded face now clotted andstained with blood, and his eyes next looked an inquiry so kind andapprehensive that she answered it, to save him breath:
"Baby's drowned. God does best!"
He reached his hand to hers--she was almost naked to the waist, havingsacrificed all she had, the greatest of which was modesty, to bring backthat life in him which came naked and unashamed into the world--and heput his little strength into the grasp.
"Mary," he exhaled, "why didn't you ketch the baby and leave me go?"
"Oh, dearly as I loved it," the woman answered, "I'm glad you come upunder my hands instead. You can do good: you're a white man. Baby wouldhave only been a poor slave, or a free negro nobody would care for."
"I mean to do good, if the Lord lets me," sighed the sailor; "I mean togo and die agin for human natur at Johnson's Cross-roads."