CHAPTER VI.--THE DISMAL CANAL.

|The waggon was loaded with barrels and bags, and plainly Mr. Todd was taking produce to some market. The great lean mules hung their heads and flopping ears hear the ground.

“Hiop!” said Mr. Todd. “Here you be! An' the cap'n pine blank mad like a teeter end hornet! Well, sirs, I'm s'prised!”

Calhoun went up calmly, as if he had naturally supposed Mr. Todd would be resting his mules about there. I remember that Calhoun once said to me: “If a man expects corn for dinner, and finds it's turnips, what will he do? It depends on the man, Bennie. I generally eat turnips.” And in the way of a figure of speech, he did, taking events easily, as they came to him.

“Going my way!” said Calhoun, “I declare! And here's Bennie Cree with cramps in his legs and crimps in his chest, just waiting for you.”

“Why, get aboard,” cried Mr. Todd. “Get aboard.”

And presently we were riding comfortably, Calhoun beside Mr. Todd, and I on a bag behind that had something lumpy inside it.

“Mad, was he?” said Calhoun. “So as to miss his boat?”

“Not he. No, sir. But he went off r'arin' an' tearin' like he'd caught the Old Boy. He cer'nly did. He ac' rippanacious. He say you two Yanks fool him both ends, an' he'd plough up Vaginia an' sow grass seed but he'd get you. He did so.”

“Offered a reward, did he? Say, about a hundred apiece. Course, he isn't foolish. More, was it?”

“Jemima! How----”

Mr. Todd looked startled and suspicious.

“Left some of his men, too? Course he did. And if they catch us you don't get the reward. That's what's in it for you.”

“Hiop! No, that's so.”

“And where are you bound for now, Mr. Todd?”

“Canal,” said Mr. Todd, seeming a little subdued.

“Going to ship market stuff to Norfolk?”

“You're a clean guesser,” grumbled Mr. Todd. “Cleanest I ever see. I was goin' to take it there myself.”

“I see. Norfolk's blockaded. You're going to take a boat load by the Swamp Canal. Use your own mules, maybe. Good idea.”

“Jemima!” said Mr. Todd, “you're a clean guesser.”

The old negro sat on a barrel, looking down at me, so bent over that his solemn, wrinkled face, with its fringe of dusty grey beard, was near his knees. He gave a soft chuckle and motioned to the two men in front.

“Marse Tommy, he gettin' he min' wukkin'. Oomm! He studyin'! Don' git no fish 'way fom _him_. No-o-o!”

He began to hug his knees with pleasure at thinking how clever Mr. Todd was about to be; and so we were believing very earnestly, both of us, each in the greater brilliancy of his own hero.

“Dey's oodles an' oodles o' folks meek out dey play kiyi wi' Marse Tommy, an' hit tu'n out quar. I don' know, but hit peahs to me dey's pow'ful misfo'tu-nate.”

Turpentine shook his head and chuckled again.

“Well,” said Calhoun, “you're after that reward naturally.”

“Oh!” said Mr. Todd, “'tain't likely I'd get it, no, other folks bein' smarte'n me.”

“But suppose, being in trouble and seeing no other way out, we thought we might as well go to Norfolk with you and take our chances. Course, we'd try to slip you there. That would be our point. And your point would be to see we didn't.”

“Jemima!” said Mr. Todd sarcastically. “Ain't you fixin' things pretty nice?”

“Well, course, I don't know that we could get clear of you any better than we could Cavarly's men. Likely we'd slip up either way. We take our chances. But how's your point? Why, if Cavarly's men catch sight of us, they grab us. Course, they want the reward. Give and take's the rule. We give you a chance at the reward, and take a chance to cut loose, sort of exchanging commodities. Now, that's square.”

“My, my!” said Mr. Todd with bland admiration, “ain't it the beatenest thing, the way you go on makin' plans! Saves me a heap o' trouble. Ain't got a jackknife to trade for a mule, have ye? Jemima!”

“Well, what do you say?”

“Me! I don' say nothin'.''

“Tha's it!” said Turpentine softly. “He don' say nothin'. Oomm! He min' wukkin'.”

We went on now jogging steadily, rather to the west than north, and the sand ridges, that had lain along between creek and creek, disappeared from the landscape. It was a continuous swampy country, a wall of reeds and matted briars on either side of the road, and great, gloomy trees standing apart, with mosses hanging. In breaks of the reeds there would be black pools, and creeks like ditches for the stillness of the water, secret, furtive, with twisted knees of cypress root sticking out of the banks, and half-sunken logs, from which the turtles plumped off solidly. The moss dripped, the very air was wet. The wind made always a hissing in the reeds.

The road was bad, full of deep holes, and sometimes made of uncertain logs, which the mules tiptoed over in an experienced manner. I learned to roll about with the waggon. Turpentine swung on his barrel like a weathervane, and seemed often to be going off into the reeds.

It grew dark, and the stars came out. The frogs were gulping about us. Turpentine crawled down from his barrel grumbling, and pulled out a blanket from below the seat; and I was glad to take a corner of it and be friendly, though neither of us made conversation, being fretful with the cold and damp.

So we went on many hours, all for the most part silently, and at last--but how late I do not know--drew up beside a house. Two or three other buildings were near, standing blackly in the night. There was a huge negro with a lantern, and a white man, lean and tall, who said, “Howdy, Tommy.” And after that I lay down somewhere on a corn-husk mattress, fever and aches for company, not thinking where we might be, or knowing till morning that we were come to the great canal.

I sat up in the dim morning, and looked about. It was a small, low room. Calhoun lay on a mattress against the door. It struck me with wonder and some shame, how careful he was, how watchful of little things. Yet for this matter, it seemed to me, if Mr. Todd had wished to make us prisoners there, he would have had no need to surprise us in the night.

Presently there were noises outside, and, when Calhoun woke, we rose and opened the door, which led into a kind of kitchen where a young woman in a neat apron was cooking. Outdoors we found Turpentine and the black giant I had seen the night before unloading the waggon into a canal boat, somewhat small, perhaps forty feet long. For the broad canal ran close to the house, with a wet, slippery tow path beside it. Mr. Todd was down in the hold of the boat, which seemed well laden, and, as I judged, for the most part, with garden stuff, fish in barrels, and vegetables in bags. But the middle of it was free for living in. I made out, by peering in, a pile of corn husks and straw for sleeping, and a stove with the pipe wired along, to take the smoke to where it could float up freely through the scuttle. The scuttle door was lifted back on hinges, and a padlock hung from it. A ladder ran down inside.

After breakfast, where the woman with the apron sat at the head of the table, and Calhoun talked with the lean man and Mr. Todd, we went back to the boat, and found one of the mules at the tow rope, and the other aboard, tied forward. Mr. Todd took the helm. Turpentine started the tow mule, shouting at him, “G'long now! You hyah me! I skin you toof.” The young woman waved her apron from the door. But this seemed surprising, that the big negro, Gamp, did not go ashore but sat with his feet hanging down the scuttle, and his bulk of shoulders slouched forward. He seemed ready to go to sleep in the sun.

Calhoun looked at him a moment, then at Mr. Todd, and afterwards went fore, where he leaned against the rail whistling to himself.

Big Gamp showed that Mr. Todd had surely been working his mind. Calhoun and I had no purpose to escape while in the Swamp, where we would be lost forever likely in its jungles and black gulfs. But Mr. Todd might think us desperate to that extent, and cause us to be tied up below by the monstrous black man, big enough to throttle an ox, and silent, and savage-eyed. For though I was stout for my age, and Calhoun a sinewy, enduring man, and both of us ready to fight, yet we could clearly do nothing with Gamp. Old Turpentine might count for little, but Mr. Todd seemed stronger, heavier than either of us.

I went forward to Calhoun, and he was not cheerful, though it seemed to be not the prospect which troubled him so much, but that he suspected himself of a mistake.

“That man, Todd, Bennie,” he said, “I figured him wrong. I didn't put him high enough. He's cornered me.”

“Why doesn't he make sure of us now?”

“Maybe he'd rather keep things agreeable while he can. That's good sense. Why, he's figuring right. He's a better man than Cavarly. Why, look here! We can't light out into this swamp. The nigger'd corral us in ten minutes.”

Calhoun fell again into gloomy silence, staring at the wild, tangled, and hopeless jungle that slipped slowly past us. Old Turpentine was plodding ahead behind his mule, and even the hump of his stolid shoulders was discouraging. “Folks meek out dey play kiyi wi' Marse Tommy. Peahs to me dey pow'ful misfo'tunate.”

I had grown almost to think Calhoun infallible with his courage and wits. It went hard with us both to have him beaten by that farmer and seine-fisher, with two negroes. It was Calhoun's pride--a weakness, if one chooses, at least what gave him most delight--to look at life and every experience as a kind of game, which he played to win, measuring himself with other men.

“I've pulled you into it, Bennie,” he said slowly. “I shouldn't have done it. Cavarly'd have seen you out, if I'd let you alone to begin with.”

“That's not square,” I said half angrily.

“Why?”

“Don't we go together? Anyhow I want my share. Why, Calhoun, I say--I don't like that talk. I say, you're all right with me, and I won't have it.”

Calhoun looked at me curiously and said:

“Shake, Bennie.”

We shook hands secretly below the rail.

But nothing of importance came that day. We crawled through the same black water, past the same wet, tangled growth and towering dark trees, with sometimes a shift of mules, and sometimes Turpentine at the helm and big Gamp on the tow path.

Calhoun and I went below before dark, with the hope of quieting Mr. Todd's mind, supposing him to be uneasy; and later, when the boat was fastened and the mule brought aboard, we all ate together, though saying little. Big Gamp took down the ladder and slept with his head on it. More threatening still it was that Mr. Todd lay with a shot gun across his knees, an odd-looking weapon, with a great lump of a hammer. So that I lay long awake, watching the dim red glimmer of the lantern, and listening to the hoarse breathing of the great negro. But my “crimps and cramps” were mainly gone.

The night passed quietly, and so too the following morning. Mr. Todd carried his shot gun about, and said nothing. By afternoon we were out of the wilderness of swamp, for there were open fields in sight, and we passed under a bridge, and saw small shanties, and little pickaninnies fishing and playing about the tow path. And though the mouths of cannon were hot that day a few miles to the north, it was peaceful on the old canal boat, or appeared so. The water rippled, the tow rope sagged, and we lay about in the sun and were silent.

In this way the time of action came jump upon us, out of the quiet and the waiting.

The sun was just set; the canal boat had stopped; the tow mule was nibbling grass by the path. Mr. Todd stepped forward, gun in hand, and Gamp behind him:

“I reckon we'll go below.”

And Calhoun said, referring to Gamp and the gun:

“It appears to be about as you say.”

Below Turpentine had taken the top off the little stove and was frying something on the coals. Gamp shuffled into a corner, and came out with his fists full of rope, of the size of lanyards or clothesline, and his fists looked like quarters of beef or the ends of battering rams.

“Now, I'm puttin' it to ye,” said Mr.

Todd, “ain't I treated ye reasonable? But a man's got to be precautions, ain't he? Jemima! Such slippery chaps as you's not goin' to follow me into Norfolk same as trained pups.”

“Your argument,” said Calhoun, standing up straight and slim, “is fine, sir, fine.”

“My, my!” said Mr. Todd soothingly. “An' I see you an' me's goin' to agree. Business, jus' business. Gamp!”

Gamp shuffled up to Calhoun, and Mr. Todd turned to me. But now, so swift an impulse came over me to fight, to run, to leap into the midst of things, that it seemed like a flash and burst, an explosion within me; and I crouched, dodged Mr. Todd, and ran blind-headlong into old Turpentine. We fell together against the stove, sending it flying along the floor, with a crash of pipe and scatter of coals and burning wood all over the com husks and straw. I jumped for the ladder. The straw and husks blazed up behind me. Mr. Todd dropped his gun and ran into the midst of the flame and smoke, stamping and shouting.

From the top of the ladder I saw big Gamp dragging Calhoun by the collar, as if he weighed no more than an old coat, dragging him over the gun on the floor. Calhoun's hand touched the gun, and gripped it. How he twisted his feet under him I could not guess. It was something too limber and swift to follow. It seemed one movement to stand up, to swing the old gun two-handed with a crash on big Gamp's head, who dropped in a heap. The gun snapped, the butt spun across the floor, and Calhoun came up the ladder with the barrel.

I caught but a glimpse from the deck into the smoky red pit below, saw Mr. Todd stamping, saw big Gamp rising, with horrible, glaring eyes and dripping mouth, heard him roar like a bull from the bottom of his throat. Turpentine sat up on the floor, rubbing his scalp: “An' mah name's Tuppentine.” Then Calhoun slammed down the scuttle and slipped the padlock.

We jumped for the shore and ran. There were woods beyond the tow path but a short distance, and no house was in sight.

“They'll burn!” I cried, as we reached the woods.

“Burn!” said Calhoun. “The nigger'll smash the scuttle with his finger. Burn!”

I looked over my shoulder, and half saw the great black head and shoulders heave up through the splintered scuttle.

We ran on through the open woods, circling towards the north. It was growing dusky, and, when we came to the open fields, it was dark enough for lights to be burning in a distant cluster of cabins. Then we found a railroad track running east and west.

“They'll hunt us this way!” I said gasping, and Calhoun:

“The other side the canal!”

We ran westward along the track to a trestle-bridge over the canal, on which we crawled hands and knees, seeing stars reflected in the dark water, and beyond came at last upon a road that seemed to lead as we wished, under the pole star, northward, where should lie the blockading ships.