Chapter 25

Thankful as I was for my wondrous escape, my mind still misgave me, both as to our own ultimate safety and as to what might befall Mistress Lucy. I did not know the extent of the swamp, and maybe Vetch and his companion would go back for their horses and, circling round it, circumvent us. Uncle Moses relieved my fears on this score, telling me that, while the swamp was little more than half a mile across, it stretched laterally for several miles, and we should reach the haven whither we were making long before the swiftest horses could complete the circuit.

On the other point, the well being of Mistress Lucy, he could give me no reassurance. 'Twas Wednesday: she came of age tomorrow; even if Vetch was not aware of this, but believed that Friday, the day of her birthday celebrations, was the actual birthday, it gave us terribly little time to concert any movements on her behalf. And so my joy of having recovered my freedom was tempered by uneasiness.

It was heavy going across this sagging morass. Uncle Moses told me that we were in no danger of sinking into it so long as we took short and rapid steps; but we were both mightily fatigued, and my feet as I lifted them seemed heavy as lead. The negro was in far worse case than I, and had I not grasped him firmly by the arm and fairly pulled him along, I think he would never have gained the other side. Towards the middle the surface of the swamp was nothing but liquid ooze, and once or twice, in spite of our swamp shoes, we sank in it up to the ankles. But at length we reached more solid ground; then Uncle Moses said we must strike off to the right, and after a tramp of two miles or thereabouts we should come to a well-concealed spot where he had no doubt we should find fugitives of his color.

As we neared the place he put his fingers to his mouth and blew a whistle of three quick notes that reminded me of the piping of a thrush. And immediately I started back: a black man had risen almost from beneath our feet. So well hidden was he in a low-growing bush that we might have passed within a yard of him and been none the wiser. I perceived that he carried a long knife in his hand.

"Hi, Sam!" said Uncle Moses, stepping in advance of me.

I stood leaning on one of the muskets while the two men spoke together in tones too low to reach my ears. But I knew from his gestures and his manner of looking at me that the stranger was loath to comply with the request Uncle Moses was putting to him. His demeanor said, as plainly as words, that he distrusted me; I was a white man, and doubtless the poor runagate had too much reason to regard all white men as his enemies. But Uncle Moses took him by the arm and appeared to plead with him; and by and by the man left us and went away.

"Him gone to ask his brudders if we may go where dey are," said Uncle Moses, coming to my side.

Then he flung himself on the ground and lay at full length upon his face, with his arms outstretched in an attitude of utter prostration. I sat down by him, clasping my knees, and mused with down-bent head.

After what seemed a long while the negro returned and told us that we might accompany him. He led us back toward the swamp, threading his way through the rank vegetation along an invisible path that wound about like the coils of a snake in most bewildering wise. But it was firm to the tread, and his bare feet had no need of swamp shoes. Finally we came to a little island copse slightly above the general level, and there, well screened from view, we found a group of about a dozen negroes. They had constructed for themselves little huts of grass and branches of trees, and in the midst a pot was boiling on a fire of sticks. They cried a greeting to Uncle Moses, and I was not a little amazed when one of them came grinning up to me and said:

"Massa Bold, we bofe free now. Huh! dat debbil nebber cotch us no mo'."

'Twas Jacob, the man who had escorted me from Spanish Town and been captured with me. He told me that he had been put to work in the plantation, but had run away on the second day, along with another man.

"Dat him ober dere," he said, pointing to a burly, pleasant-featured negro who was in close conversation with Moses. "Dat Noah! Ah! he hab drefful time--pufeckly drefful, 'cos he help Missy."

"What did he do?" I asked, feeling a most friendly disposition towards a man who had done anything for Lucy.

"She want to run away, too," he said; "ebery one want to run away. She got on horse, and Noah was leading her round about, but dey cotched him, and den, oh, lor', didn't dey jest beat him!

"Say, Noah, show Massa Bold your po' back."

The man left Uncle Moses, and, coming to me, turned about (he was naked to the waist) and displayed to my sickened gaze a score of long, raw wounds upon his back. They had begun to heal; I learned that his companions had anointed them with grease, and plastered them with leaves from a plant that grew abundantly in the forest.

"Dat is what Massa Vetch do," he said with a dark look, "and his friend he look on and cry to him to gib me mo'. He say, teach me a lesson, and I learn it--oh, yes, I learn it. And now I show how to teach lesson back."

His pleasant face was darkened with a glare of utter savagery.

"Black man can teach jest as good as white. Come 'long o' me, massa; I show massa somet'ing."

Wondering, I followed him past the huts, through the copse, into a little clearing, when I saw a white man stripped to the shirt and tightly bound to a tree.

"Dat is him!" cried Noah excitedly. "Dat is de white debbil what say gib me mo'. I teach him lesson: he nebber want no mo'."

His tone already sent a shiver through me, but as he went on to explain the nature of the lesson he intended, I shuddered with horror.

"Dis berry night we burn him up!" he cried. "Massa Bold see? We tie him up to de bough of de tree, and we light a lill fire, jest a lill one, and first it warm his feet, and den it get bigger, and creep up and up, and bimeby it come to his head, and den he burn all up. Oh, yes; dat is a proper lesson for white debbils to learn!"

"You will not do anything so horrible!" I murmured.

"Hobbible! Hain't my back hobbible? He laugh when he see ole whip come whisk! whisk! on my po' back; well, den, I laugh when I see de fire go creep, creep, and when I hear him holler. Oh, yes, it will be a proper lesson, no mistake 'bout it."

And then the poor bound wretch, whose head was hanging forward as though he were already in extremis, lifted his eyes and saw me.

"Bold! Humphrey Bold!" he shrieked in a harsh, gasping whisper. "Save me! Save me from these monsters!"

I started forward, scarce believing my eyes. In the pinched, haggard features of the man who was lashed to the tree I recognized my old enemy, my whilom schoolfellow, Dick Cludde.

"Save me! Save me!" he cried again and again.

"For God's sake, loose him!" I cried, turning to the negro.

God knows Cludde had done me harm enough; but for the working of a gracious Providence he had ruined my life; but all remembrance of this fled from me as I beheld his pitiful plight and mortal terror, and heard his altered voice screaming for mercy.

"I know him; he was once a friend of mine," I cried, and God forgive me the lie. "Let him go; don't torture him any longer."

Noah laughed in my face.

"What for me let him go?" he said. "'Cos he is a white man? He is a white debbil; he shall hab his lesson."

"But it is murder. You would not murder him?"

"And he murder me! De whip cut me twenty times, and if I die, what den? Noah is only a black man: it is not murder to kill a black man! Dey kill me: I lib for teach him lesson."

"Let him go," I cried, "and I will give you money--twenty dollars."

"No!"

"Thirty--forty dollars!"

"No!"

"Forty dollars is a great big lot," said Uncle Moses, who had joined us and saw my desperate eagerness to save the man.

"No!" said Noah again, his mouth tightening with inflexible determination.

"Uncle Moses," I said, "can't you bend him? I will give anything if he will but spare the man. I am a king's officer; you know that what I promise I will do; and he is your mistress' cousin."

"Noah, my son," said the old negro, "listen to Massa. S'pose you burn de white man, what good to you? He die, oh course, and nebber can do nuffin' to black mans no mo'; but you will only be pleased a lill tiny while, and if you let him go you gwine hab dollars what will last long, long time."

"No!" returned Noah. "I will teach him lesson, and be pleased for ebber and ebber."

And he walked away and began to gather up some sticks and carry them to the tree where Cludde, utterly exhausted, seemed to have fainted away.

I asked Moses what sum would purchase Noah's freedom, ready to spend my last penny to prevent the hideous scene for which preparation was being made. He told me five hundred dollars, and I bade him go to Noah and promise that the money should be his as soon as I got back to Spanish Town. He returned downcast from his mission.

"He say dat is all talk," he said. "It is for bimeby, but he want rebenge now; black man don't fink nuffin' ob bimeby."

"But can't we give him something now as earnest of what is to come? There are our muskets; they will be useful to him, and are worth some dollars; offer them to him, and assure him on the word of an Englishman that he shall have the price of his freedom as soon as ever I can get back to my friends."

He went away with this message, but came back again unsuccessful.

"He say hab plenty guns, and what good guns widout any powder and shots? He hain't got no powder; de guns hain't worth more'n old sticks. Hain't Massa got no money? If he seed de look of silver, now, dat would be somet'ing 'spectable."

But my pockets were empty; all my money had been taken by the buccaneers. And then, with a start of recollection, I remembered the crown piece that hung by a riband about my neck, and with the thought a flash of inspiration shot through my mind. I ran forward to the spot where Noah was already heaping the sticks for the fire, and, tearing open my shirt, I displayed the silver coin.

"Look, Noah," I cried, "you shall have this, and five hundred dollars beside by and by. Listen while I tell you about it."

And then I told how, ever since I had worn that coin about my neck, I had had the best of good fortune. It had brought me friends, and raised me from a lowly position. I had been imprisoned and escaped; I had been shot at, without scathe. I had gained what I prized most in all the world. I fear I exaggerated; certainly I had never before ascribed any talismanic power to the coin which I had kept for no other purpose than to humiliate the man who had humiliated me. But in this extremity I saw the possibility of working on the negro's superstitious mind, and I would have racked my invention to give the piece the most marvelous virtues under heaven.

But I had said enough. With a stare of wonderment Noah took the coin in his hand, turned it over, examined it, handled it as though it was a sacred object. I lifted the string from my neck.

"There, take it; 'tis yours," I said, handing it to him, and then, by a happy afterthought, I myself slipped it over the negro's head. He saw the white coin lying on his dusky breast, a smile overspread his face, most wondrously obliterating all the lines of malice and hate; and then, turning swiftly, he went to the tree, with me at his heels, and cut the cords.

Cludde fell fainting into my arms, and as I laid him on the ground and begged for water (not a drop had passed his lips for thirty-six hours), I wondered whether he would ever know how I had paid the stored-up interest I had vowed to pay.