Chapter 34

THE ORDEAL.

When Levin Dennis awoke in the bottom of the old wagon it was being rapidly driven, and Van Dorn's voice from the driver's seat was heard to say, without its usual lisp and Spanish interjection:

"Whitecar, is your brother at Dover sure of his game?"

"Cock sure, Cap'n. Got 'em tree'd! Best domestic stock in the town thar, an' the purtiest yaller gals: I know that suits _you_, Cap'n!"

"Have they arms?"

"Not a trigger. We trap 'em at one of their 'festibals.' No, sir, niggers won't scrimmage."

"We assemble at Devil Jim Clark's," said Van Dorn, and passed by with a crack of his whip.

Levin, whom some friendly hand had wrapped in a bearskin coat--he had seen one like it upon Van Dorn--next heard the slaver speak to another party he had overtaken:

"Melson?"

"Ay yi!"

"Milman?"

"Ah! boy."

"You get your orders at Devil Jim Clark's!"

The stars were out, yet the night was rich in large, fleecy clouds, as if heaven were hurrying onward too. Levin lay on his back, jostled by the rough wagon, but, being perfectly sober now, he was more reasoning and courageous, and his new-found love impelled him to self-preservation. He might have rolled out of the vehicle and into the woods, and at least saved himself from committing further crime, but how would he see Hulda any more--Hulda, in danger, perhaps? Thus, even to ignorance, love brings understanding, and Levin began to ask himself the cause of his own misery. He knew it was liquor, yet what made him drink if not a disposition too easily led? Even now he was under almost voluntary subjection to the bandit in the wagon, whose voice he heard blandly command again to some pair he had caught up to:

"Tindel?"

"Tackle 'em, Cap'n Van! Tackle 'em!"

"You are not to be in peril to-night, so keep your spirits. I expect you to look out for the cords, gags, and fastenings generally!"

"Tackle 'em, Captin; oh, tackle 'em!"

"You and Buck Ransom there--"

"Politely, Captain; politely, sir!" exclaimed an insinuating voice from a negro rider.

"Are to meet us all at Devil Jim's!"

"Tackle 'em, Captin!"

"Politely, Captain!"

As Van Dorn urged his way to the head of the line, Levin looked out silently upon the flat country of forest and a few poor farms, drained imperfectly by some ditches of the Choptank. He supposed it might be almost midnight, from the position of those brilliant constellations which shone down equally upon his mother and himself--she in her innocence and he in his anxiety--and shone, also, perhaps, upon his poor father's grave in isle or ocean.

Within an hour blood was to be shed, no doubt, and rapine done, and he knew not the road to escape by nor the hole to hide in. Yet in that hour he had to make his choice,--to fight for liberty, or go to the jail, the whipping-post, or, perhaps, the gallows.

Levin considered ruefully his vagrant past, and how little could be said in extenuation of him in a court of justice, except by his mother's faith, which was no more evidence than a negro's oath.

Once it arose in his mind to surprise Van Dorn, overcome him, cast him out in a ditch, and drive to some one of the little farmhouses and rest, till day should give him his whereabouts and remedy.

Levin was not a coward, and his muscles were hard, and his feet could cling to a smooth plank like a bird's to a bough; but his heart relented to the fierce, soft man so unsuspectingly sitting with his back to him, when Levin reflected that he must, perhaps, put an end to Van Dorn's life with his sailor's knife, if they grappled at all, and this day expiring Van Dorn had paid a debt for him to the widow whose son was next overtaken, and who cried, forwardly, without being addressed:

"Van Dorn, what you goin' to give me if I git a nigger?"

"This!" said Van Dorn, without a pause, reaching the boy a measured blow with his whip-lash on the shoulder that made him literally fall from the mule and grovel with pain.

"Discipline is what your mother failed to give you, _reprobo_. Manners I shall teach you. Fall in the rear!"

Owen Daw crawled desperately on his mule and obeyed without parley, but his audacity soon recovered enough to force his animal up to the wagon tail and open whispered communications with Levin there.

Nothing had passed them for hours that Levin had seen, when suddenly a horseman at a rapid lope stopped the wagon, and a hoarse negro voice muttered:

"How de do, now? See me! see me!"

"Derrick Molleston?" spoke Van Dorn.

"See me! see me!"

"Get down and ride with me. Levin, are you awake?"

"Yes, Captain."

"Take this man's horse and ride him. John Sorden is ahead. It will stretch your chilled limbs."

"May I go with him?" asked Owen Daw, in his Celtic accent, quite cringing now.

"Not unless he wants you."

"Come, then," Levin obligingly said.

While the two youths were still lingering by the wagon they heard these words:

"Have you arranged everything with Whitecar and Devil Jim?"

"See me! see me!"--apparently meaning, "Rely upon me."

"Is Greenley ready to make the diversion if any attack be made upon us?"

"See me! see me! His gallus is up and he'd burn de world."

"This Lawyer Clayton?"

"See me! see me! He gives a big party, Aunt Braner tole me. A judge is dar from Prencess Anne, an' liquor a-plenty. See me! see me!"

"The white people absolutely gone from Cowgill House?"

"See me! It's nigh half a mile outen de town. Dar's forty tousand dollars, if dar's a cent, at dat festibal: gals more'n half white, men dat can read an' preach: de cream of Kent County. See me! see me!"

"And not a suspicion of our coming?"

"See me! O see me!" hoarsely said the negro; "innercent as de unborn. To-night's deir las' night!"

Levin trembled as these merciless words reached his ears, but Owen Daw seemed to forget his affront at the tidings, and chuckled to Levin as they trotted away:

"Bet you I git a better nigger nor you!"

"Oh, shame, Owen Daw! Your mother was saved to-day from bein' turned out of doors by my pity. Think of robbin' these niggers of their freedom! What have they done?"

"Been niggers!" exclaimed Owen Daw. "That's enough!"

"What will you do, Owen, to help your poor mother?"

"Wait till I git big enough, bedad, an' kill ole Jake Cannon for this day's work."

As they rode on they came to the man called Sorden, riding as the guide to the invading column, a person of more genteel address than any beneath Van Dorn, and young, pliable, and frolicking.

"My skin!" he said. "Now, boys, Van Dorn oughtn't had to brung you. You're too sniptious for this rough work. I love the Captain better than I ever loved A male, but he oughtn't to spile boys."

"Van Dorn told me to come," Owen Daw cried. "I'm big enough to buck a nigger."

"I love him better than I ever loved A male," said Sorden, apologetically. "Who is t'other young offender?"

"I'm a stranger to your parts," Levin replied. "Mrs. Cannon made me come. I didn't want to."

"Are you afear'd?"

"Yes," Levin said.

"Well, I love the Captain better than I ever loved A male. But boys is boys, and I hate to see 'em spiled. If you was nigger boys I wouldn't keer a cent; but white's my color, and I don't want to trade in it."

They halted at a small, sharp-gabled brick house, of one story and a kitchen and garret, at the left of the road, to which the corner of a piece of oak and hickory woods came up shelteringly, while in the rear several small barns and cribs enclosed the triangle of a field. A door in the middle, towards Maryland, seemed very high-silled, and low grated windows were at the cellar on each side of the steps.

The place had a suspicious appearance, and a pack of hounds in full cry rushed from the kitchen, and, while in the act of leaping the stile and palings, were arrested almost in mid air by a chuffy voice crying from within:

"Hya! Down! Spitch!"

The whole pack meekly sneaked back to the house, whining low, and a few blows of a switch and short howls within completed the excitement.

"What place is this?" asked Owen Daw.

"Devil Jim Clark's," said Sorden.

The dwelling stood about forty yards back from the road, drawing nearly into the cover of the woods, and its little yard was made cavernous by thick-planted paper-mulberry and maple trees, while a line of cherry-trees and an old pole-well rose along the road and hedge. As they rode to the rear of the house a little dormer window, like a snail, crawled low along the roof, and a light was shining from it.

"Devil Jim's business-office," nodded Sorden.

"What's his business?" asked Levin, freshly.

"Niggers. He keeps 'em up thar between the garret and the roof--sometimes in the cellar."

"Does he want a business-office for that?"

"He's a contractor on the canawl, too, Jim is--raises race-horses, farms it, gambles a little, but nigger-runnin' is his best game. My skin! Yer comes Captain Van Dorn. I love him as I never loved A male."

"Van Dorn," spoke a voice from the house, "remember my family is particular. Your men must go to the barn. Come in!"

"Spiced brandy at the barn!"--a quiet remark from somewhere--was sufficient to lead the herd away, and, giving the order to "water and fodder," Van Dorn passed into the kitchen, thence through a bedroom to the chief room of the house, and up a small winding-stair to a scrap of hallway or corridor hardly two feet wide.

The man who led pointed to a trap above one end of this hall, and exclaimed, "Niggers there! family yonder!"--the last reference to a door closing the little passage.

He then opened a wicket at the side of the hall, admitting Van Dorn to an exceedingly small closet or garret room, barely large enough for the men to sit, and lighted by a lamp in the little dormer window seen from below.

"Drink!" said the man, uncorking a bottle of champagne; "I had it ready for you."

He poured the foaming wine and set the bottle on a sort of secretary or desk, and then looked anxiety and avarice together out of his liquid black eyes and broad, heavy face.

"_Buena suerte, senor!_" Van Dorn lisped, as they drank together.

"Hya! spitch!" nervously muttered Clark, cutting his own top-boots with a dog-whip. "I wish I was out of the business: the risk is too great. My wife is religious--praying, mebbe, now, in there. My daughters is at the seminaries, spendin' money like the Canawl Company on the lawyers. Nothin' pays like nigger-stealin', but it's beneath you and me, Van Dorn."

"_A la verdad!_ This is my last incursion, Don Clark. Pleasure has kept me poor for life. To-day I did a little sacrifice, and it grows upon me."

"If they should ketch me and set me in the pillory, Van Dorn, for what you do to-night, hya! spitch!"--he slashed his knees--"it would break Mrs. Clark's heart."

"I want this money to-night," said Van Dorn, "to make two young people happy. They shall take my portion, and take me with them out of the plains of Puckem."

"Oh, it is nervous business"--Clark's eyes of rich jelly made the pallor on his large face like a winding-sheet--"hya! spitch! The Quakers are a-watchin' me. Ole Zekiel Jinkins over yer, ole Warner Mifflin down to the mill, these durned Hunns at the Wildcat--they look me through every time they ketch me on the road. But the canawl contract don't pay like niggers; my folks must hold their heads up in the world; Sam Ogg won't let me keep out of temptation."

"Do you fear me, Devil Jim?"

"Hya! spitch! No. If all in the trade was like you, I could sleep in trust. If you go out of it, so will I."

"Then to-night, _penitente!_ we make our few thousand and quit. Give up your cards and I my _doncellitas_, and we can at least live."

They shook hands and drank another glass, and then Van Dorn said:

"Send up to me, _hermano!_ the lad who will reply to the name of Levin. With him I would speak while you give the directions! Poor coward!" Van Dorn said, after his host had descended the stairs, "he can never be less than a thief with that irksomeness under such fair competence."

At that moment a beautiful maid or woman, in her white night-robe, stood in the little doorway, with eyes so like the richness of his just gone that it must have been his daughter. She fled as she recognized a stranger, and Van Dorn pursued till a door was closed in his face.

"Poor fool!" he said, sinking into his chair again; "I will never be more honest than any woman can make me!"

As Levin entered the little hallway Van Dorn smiled:

"Here is a glass of real wine to inspire you, _junco_."

"No, Captain. I would rather die than drink it."

"Do you repent coming with me?"

"Oh, bitterly, Captain. I don't want to steal poor, helpless people if they is black."

"Now, listen, lad!"--Van Dorn's face ceased to blush and the coarse look came into his blue eyes--"this night's excursion is for your profit. I like your gentle inclination for me, and the good acts you have solicited from me, and the confidence you have shown me as to your love for pretty Hulda. Join me in this work willingly, and I will give her, for your marriage settlement, all my share."

"Never," Levin exclaimed.

Van Dorn drew his knife and rose to his feet.

"Levin," he lisped, "I promised Patty Cannon that I would bring you back spotted with crime or dead. Now choose which it shall be."

"To die, then," cried Levin, with one hand drawing the long, silken hair from his eyes and with the other drawing his own knife; "but I will fight for my life."

Van Dorn seized Levin's wrist in a vise-like grip, but, as he did so, threw his own knife upon the floor.

"Oh! _huerfano_, waif," Van Dorn murmured, while his blush returned, "take heed thou ever sayest 'No' with courage like that, when cowardice or weak acquiescence would extort thy 'Yes.' This moment, if thou hadst consented, thy heart would be on my knife, young Levin!"

He drew the knife from Levin's hand and put it in his ragged coat again, and set the boy on his knee as if he had been a little child.

"Oh, God be thanked I did not kill you, sir," sobbed Levin, his tears quickly following his courage; "twice I have thought of doin' it to-day."

"I never would have put you to that test, my poor lad, but that I saw your conscience at work all this day under the stimulation of virtuous love. Think nothing of me. Build your own character upon some good example, and, sweet as life is, fight for it on the very frontiers of your character. _Die_ young, but surrender only when you are old."

"Captain," Levin said, "how kin I git character? My father is dead. Everybody twists me around his fingers."

"Then think of some plain, strong, faithful man you may know and refer every act of your character to him. Ask yourself what he would do in your predicament, then go and do the same."

"I do know such a man," Levin said, in another moment; "It is Jimmy Phoebus, my poor, beautiful mother's beau."

"_El rayo ha caido!_" Van Dorn spoke, low and calm; "yes, Levin, any man worthy of your mother will do."

"Captain, turn back with me! Is it too late?"

"Too late these many years, young _senor_. I shall lead the war on Africa to-night again at Cowgill House."

He rose and finished the wine.

"Clark shall give you a horse, Levin. I present it to you. Ride on with Sorden at the lead, and a mile from here, at Camden town, take your own way. Good-night!"

Taking a single look at the miserable band of whites and blacks collected in the barn, and revealed by a lantern's light in the excitement of drink and avarice, or the familiarity of fear and vice--some inspecting gags of corn-cob and bucks of hickory, others trimming clubs of blackjack with the roots attached; others loading their horse-pistols and greasing the dagger-slides thereon; some whetting their hog-killing knives upon harness, others cutting rope and cord into the lengths to bind men's feet--Levin was set on the loping horse he had been already riding, by Clark, the host, and soon met Sorden on the road.

"Where is Van Dorn?" Sorden asked; "I love him as I never loved A male."

"He sends me to Camden of an errand," Levin answered; "is it far?"

"About a mile. Three miles, then, to Dover. My skin! how fresh your critter is; ain't it Dirck Molleston's? I thought so. Then he'll be wantin' to turn in at Cooper's Corners."

"Does Derrick live there?"

"Yes. That's whar he holds the Forks of both roads from below, and watches the law in Dover. I hope Van Dorn will git away with the loot and not git ketched, fur I love him as I never loved A male."

Levin's horse, at his easy gait, soon left Sorden far behind, and the strange events of the night, and his wonder what to do next, kept Levin's brain whirling till he saw the form of a few houses rise among the trees, and a line of arborage indicate a main road from north to south. The scent as of cold, wide waters and marshes filled the night.

"Here is Camden," Levin thought; "where shall I go? If I turn south I shall get no bed nor food all night, and be picked up in the mornin' fur a kidnapper. I can't go back. The big river or the ocean, I reckon, is before me. What would Jimmy Phoebus do?"

He held the animal in as he asked this question, and paused at the crossing of the great State road.

The idea slowly spread upon his whole existence that James Phoebus would, in Levin's place, ride instantly to Dover and give the alarm.

Levin tried to construct Phoebus in a mood to give some other advice, but, as the resolute pungy captain's form seemed to bestride the young man's mind, it rose more and more stalwart, and appeared to lead towards Dover, where so many poor souls, in the joys of intercourse and freedom, were like little birds unconscious of the hawks above them, and no man in the world but Levin Dennis could save them from death or bondage.

Would James Phoebus, with his lion nature, ever hesitate in the duty of a citizen and a Christian under such circumstances, or forgive another man for withholding information that might be life and liberty and mercy?

Yet there was Van Dorn to be betrayed. What would Van Dorn do in Levin's place?

The words of Van Dorn, not a quarter of an hour old, spoke aloud in Levin's echoing consciousness: "Think nothing of me. Refer every act to some faithful man and go and do the same!"

Levin looked up, and the very clouds, now swollen dark in spite of starshine, seemed hurrying on Dover. The night-birds were crying "Mercy! mercy!" the lizards and tree-frogs seemed to cross each other's voices, piping "Time! time! time!"

"_Huldy!_" Levin whispered, and let the reins fall loose, and his animal darted through Camden town to the north.

He had gone by the small frame houses, the Quaker meeting, the stores, the outskirt residences, when suddenly his horse turned out to pass a large, dark object in the road ahead, and a horseman rode right across Levin's course, forcing his animal back on its haunches.

"High doings, friend!" a man's voice raspingly spoke; "I'm concerned for thee!"

"Git out of my way or I'll stab you!" Levin cried, between his new ardor to do his duty and the idea that he had already been intercepted by Patty Cannon's band.

"Ha, friend! I'm less concerned for myself than thee. Thou wilt not stab a citizen of Camden town at his own door?"

"For Heaven's sake, let me go, then!" Levin pleaded. "The kidnappers is coming to Dover in a few minutes. I want to tell Lawyer Clayton!"

Immediately the other person, a tall, lean man, wheeled and dashed after the dark object ahead, which Levin, following also hard, found to be a large covered wagon--something between the dearborn or farmer's and the family carriage.

"Bill," the Quaker called to the driver, "spare not thy whip till Dover be well past. Here is one who says kidnappers are raiding even the capital of Delaware. I'm concerned for thee!"

The driver began to whip his horses into a gallop, and cries, as of several persons, came out of the close-curtained vehicle.

"What's in there?" Levin asked the Quaker, who had rejoined him; "niggers?"

"No, friend," the Quaker crisply answered, "only Christians."

They crossed a mill-stream, and soon afterwards a smaller run, without speaking, and came to a little log-and-frame cabin in a fork of the road, where Levin's horse tried to run in.

"Ha, friend! Is it not Derrick Molleston's loper thee has--the same that he gets from Devil Jim Clark? What art thou, then? I feel concerned for thee."

"A Christian, too, I hope," answered Levin, forcing his nag up the road.

"Then thee is better than a youth in this dwelling we next pass," the Quaker said, pointing to a brick house on the left; "for there lived a judge whose son bucked a poor negro fiddler in his father's cellar, and delivered him to Derrick Molleston to be sold in slavery. I hear the poor man tells it in his distant house of bondage."

"What's this?" Levin inquired, seeing a strange structure of beams on a cape or swell to the right, in sight of the dark forms of a town on the next crest beyond.

"A gallows," said the Quaker, "on which a horse-thief will be hanged to-morrow. To steal a horse is death; to steal a fellow-man is nothing."

As he spoke, the mysterious carriage turned down a cross street of Dover and stole into the obscurity of the town.

"Ha! ha!" exclaimed the Quaker; "if Joe Johnson had not stopped to feed at Devil Jim's, he might have overtaken my brother's wagon full of escaping slaves. I tell thee, friend, because I'm scarce concerned for thee now."