II.
The overseer nodded, and chewing stolidly, lounged out into the yard, where stood the kitchen, smoke-house, and other outbuildings, and going on through the orchard, emerged upon a blinding space where a row of white-washed cabins, with the gin-house hard by, glared in the hot light. A few negro children, half naked, with a lean and sickly old hound, were grouped in the shade of the gin-house. Near them, in the full blaze of the sunlight, a negro man, in coarse plantation clothes of a dirty white, sat on the ground in a squatting posture, feebly shaking his bare head, to keep off the swarm of insects that tormented him. This was Antony. He was bound in a peculiar manner—bucked, as the plantation slang has it. The ankles were firmly lashed together—the knees drawn up to the chest—the wrists also firmly pinioned and passed over the knees, and between the elbow-joints and the knee-pits, a short stick was inserted, thus holding movelessly in a bundle of agonizing cramp the limbs of the victim. This infernal torture—practised by the tyrants of our marine on their sailors—that class whose helplessness and wrongs most nearly resemble those of slaves—practised also on wretched criminals by the tyrants of our jails—Antony had endured from midnight till now, about two o’clock in the afternoon.
Nine years Lafitte’s chattel, he had been badly used from time to time, and, of late, dreadfully. He had learned to read and write a little before he had come to the plantation, and a week before the present time he had picked up a scrap of newspaper on which was a fragment of one of those declamations about liberty, which southern politicians are fools enough to be making on all opportunities, amidst a land of slaves. The fragment had some swagger about the northern oppression of the South, which Antony did not understand any more than anybody else; but it rounded up with Patrick Henry’s famous “Give me Liberty or give me Death!” which he understood very well; for from that moment Liberty or Death was a phrase which spoke like a voice in his mind, urging him to escape from his bondage. The next thing was to write a pass, make a package addressed to the house of Lafitte Brothers, New Orleans, and with this evidence of his assumed mission endeavor to reach that city, where he meant to smuggle himself into the hold of some vessel northward bound.
Clad in an old suit of Mr. Tassle’s, which he had taken from the gin-house, and boldly riding away the night before, on a mare borrowed from Mr. Lafitte’s stables, he had been suddenly met on a turn of the road—unaccountably met at midnight—by his master and the overseer, who seized him and found his forged credentials upon him. At once, he had been violently beaten over the head with their whip-stocks driven back to the plantation, reclothed in his plantation suit, securely bound, and left with horrid threats of torment on the morrow. The morrow had come, and here he was in utter misery, half crazy, and more than half fancying that he was in Hell.
Mr. William Tassle, his tobacco revolving slowly in his open mouth, stood and stolidly surveyed him. A pitiable object, truly! His face was bruised and swollen, and from wounds in his brow and cheek, made by the blows of the whip-handles, a dull ooze of blood, thinned by his sweat, had spread its stain over the whole countenance. Around the wounds buzzed and clung greedy clusters of black flies, hardly driven off by the feeble motions of his head, and returning every instant. His dark face, ashen grey and flaccid under the crimson stain, and faint with suffering, wore a look of dumb endurance; his eyelids drooped heavily over his downcast eyes; and his breath came in short gasps through the bloody froth that had gathered on his loose mouth. His wrists were cut with the tight cords that bound them, and his hands were discolored and swollen, as were his ankles. Even the overseer felt a sort of rude pity for him.
“Well, Ant’ny,” said Mr. Tassle, slowly, pausing and turning his head aside to eject a vigorous squirt of tobacco juice, which lit upon a small chip and deluged a fly thereon, throwing the insect into quivering spasms of torture; “you’re in for it, you poor, mis’ble devil. Yer master’s goin’ to admonish ye, so he says. Know what that means, don’t ye? It’s all up with you, Ant’ny.”
The dumb, bruised face, with its blood-shot eyes, feebly turned up to his for a moment, then drooped away.
“Come, now,” said Mr. Tassle, cutting the negro’s bonds with two strokes of a jack-knife, “up with ye.”
Antony, suddenly released from his cramped posture, fell over; then made a feeble effort to crawl up on his hands and knees, tottered, sank down, and lay panting. Mr. Tassle started with alacrity for the gin-house, the black piccaninnies scampering and tumbling over each other in their scramble to get away, and the old hound sneaking after them. Presently he came back with a bucket of water and a gourd. Antony raised himself and drank from the gourd; then sat up, panting, but relieved.
“Strip,” said Mr. Tassle.
Antony tried, and was helped roughly by the overseer, who then dashed the bucket of water over his naked body. It revived him, for he presently began to wipe himself feebly with his trowsers. In the midst of this operation, Mr. Tassle seized him, rolled him over from the wet ground to a dry spot, and began to rub his arms and knees vigorously with his horny hand, chewing and expectorating rapidly as he did so. Soon the arrested circulation began to be restored, and Antony, getting his clothes on, was able to walk up and down in a brisk, tottering walk, the calves of his legs loosely shaking, and his legs trembling with exhaustion.
“That’ll do,” said Mr. Tassle, at length; “you’ll be ready for your floggin’ right soon. Here, you dam cuss of a nigger, drink a swallow of this. That’ll set you up.”
Antony took the proffered whisky-flask—Mr. Tassle’s pocket companion—and gulped the liquor. It went to his poor, famished heart like fire, and shot some vigor through his numbed veins.
“Damned if I aint a philanthroper,” growled Mr. Tassle. “Lettin’ a hell-bent cuss of a sooty nigger drink my whisky. No matter. Have it out o’ yer hide, Ant’ny, afore supper time. Now pick up yer feet for the house. Yer master has to settle with yer.”
Antony went on to the house, Mr. Tassle following, and contemplatively regarding, as he spat and chewed, the shaking calves of the negro’s legs, which he had a chance to do, as the old trowsers, too short in the first instance, were now split up the backs, nearly to the knees, and feebly flapped as the slave tottered on. Antony himself, giddy with his long exposure in the sun, and with the glow of the liquor he had drank, felt his poor mind wander a little, and was conscious of nothing so much as of the queer tattered shadow that bobbed around him, and which he half fancied would trip him up if he were to try to run away now.
An indefinite sense, which fell upon him as he entered the house, and slowly walked through the passage, that this guarding shadow had fallen behind and left him, was succeeded by a sense as vague, that the shadow he now saw lurking in the sunlight on the floor beneath his master’s chair, was the same, and that it had gone on before when he came into the passage, and would leap from that place and chase him were he to flee. Dimly conscious of this fancy, he kept his hot eyes fixed upon the shadow—conscious also of a dreadful sullen hatred rising in his heart, and prompting him to spring upon his tyrant and strangle him, though he died for it afterward. Beyond this, he was vaguely aware that Tassle had put something that clanked on the table, and had gone; and that the madame, as he would have called her, was present, sitting very still, and apparently indifferent to him or anything that might happen to him.
Suddenly he heard the smooth and quiet voice of his master, seeming nearer to him than it should have seemed.
“Well, Antony, so it appears that I have a learned nigger on my plantation. Cousin to the learned pig, I suppose. Did you ever hear of the learned pig, Antony?”
“Never did, Marster.”
“Indeed. Then you never heard what happened to him?”
“Never did hear, Marster.”
“Ah! Indeed! Well, he ran away, and was caught, and flogged, and bucked, to begin with. Just like you, Antony. After which he was treated so that he wished he was dead, Antony. Just as you are going to be, my learned nigger. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Marster.”
In this colloquy, Mr. Lafitte’s voice was as smooth and tranquil as though he were promising his servant pleasures instead of pains. Antony had answered mechanically, in a voice as quiet and subdued as his tyrant’s, with the slightest possible quaver in his husky tones.
“So you can read and write, Antony,” said the planter, after a pause.
“A little bit, Marster.”
“A little bit, eh? Yes. Come, now, let’s have a specimen. Here’s the ‘Picayune,’ with something that suits your case.” Mr. Lafitte took the paper from the table as he spoke. “A little bit of abolition pleasantry that your British friends fling at the South, and this booby editor circulates. Here, read it out.”
Antony saw his master’s hand extending the paper to him, with the thumb indicating a paragraph. Moving nearer, he mechanically took the paper. The print swam dizzily before his eyes, as, with a halting voice, he slowly read aloud what was, in fact, one of the most pungent anti-slavery sarcasms of the day:
“‘From the—London—Morning Advertiser. One million dollars—reward. Ran away—from—the—subscriber—on the 18th August—a likely—Magyar fellow (Antony boggled terribly over ‘Magyar’ which he thought must mean mulatto), named—Louis—Kossuth. He is—about—45—years old—5 feet—6 inches—high. Dark—complexion, marked—eyebrows, and—grey eyes.’”
“Not a bad description of you, Antony,” interpolated Mr. Lafitte. “Quite like you, in fact. Go ahead.”
Antony stammered on, losing the place, and beginning lower down.
“‘Captains and—masters—of vessels—are—particularly—cautioned—against—harboring—or—concealing—the said—fugitive—on board—their ships—as the—full—penalty—of the law—will—be—rigorously—enforced.’”
“You see, Antony,” again interrupted the planter. “You reckoned, I suppose, on getting off in a ship, when your nice scheme got you to New Orleans. Didn’t you, my nigger Kossuth? You’d be advertised though, and caught, just like him. Go on.”
Unheeding this sally of Mr. Lafitte’s cheerful fancy, Antony went on, losing the place again, and getting to the bottom of the paragraph.
“‘N.B.—If the—fellow—cannot—be taken—alive—I will pay—a—reward—of (Antony boggled again over the ‘250,000 ducats’ named, and called it twenty-five dollars), for his—scalp. Terms as—above. Francis—Joseph—Emperor—of—Austria.’”
“Good,” said the planter. “Your scalp, you woolly-headed curse, wouldn’t bring that in the market, or I’d have it off, and your hide with it. Lay the paper down. You read atrociously.”
Antony laid the paper on the table, and without looking at his master, fixed his blurred eyes on the floor again.
“You see,” continued the planter, “how runaways get served. You have been told both by Tassle and myself that even if you got North you’d be sent back. We’ve got a Fugitive Slave Law now for runaway niggers, and back they come. You go to Philadelphia. That good Ingraham—that good Judge Kane—that dear Judge Cadwallader—they send you back. You go to New York. Lord! There everybody sends you back! You go to Boston. That dear Ben Hallett grabs you. That good Sprague—that good Curtis—all these good people grab you, as they grabbed that nigger Sims, and back you come. Yet you try it, you foolish Antony. Your cursed brother got off from me nine years ago, and so you think you’ll try it too. Fine fellows both of you. He leaves Cayenne pepper in his tracks, which plays the devil with the hounds, and off he gets. But you’ve had to smart for him. All you’ve got since has been on his account. Now you’ll get something on your own. I’ll teach you to steal my horse and make off for the river with your forged pass and package. Do you see this?”
Lifting his dizzy eyes to the level of his master’s hand, Antony saw that it held a heavy iron collar with a prong, on which he read in stamped letters, Lafitte Brothers, New Orleans.
“My brother had a nigger that wore this collar once,” said the smooth, cruel voice, “and now you’ll wear it. If you ever get away again, which I’ll take care you never will, people will know who you belong to, my fine boy. Kneel down here.”
Antony felt the sullen hatred seethe up in his heart, and his brain reeled.
“I won’t have that collar on me, Marster,” he huskily muttered. “You may kill me, Marster, but I won’t have that collar on me.”
“You won’t, eh?” returned Mr. Lafitte, tranquilly. “Oh, well then, if you won’t, you won’t. By the way,” he pursued, carelessly taking the paper from the table, and fanning himself gently, “do you know how I knew you were going to run away? I’ll tell you. I was standing near the gin-house last night when you came there to steal Tassle’s old clothes, and I heard you say to yourself—‘Now for liberty or death.’ Ah, ha, Antony, you shouldn’t talk aloud! Tassle and I saw you go to the stable and take the mare, and then we saddled and headed you off, my nigger. That’s the way of it. Pick up that paper.”
Raising his eyes to his tyrant’s feet, Antony saw the folded paper there where it had been dropped. Approaching, he painfully stooped to pick it up, when he felt himself seized, thrown down upon his knees, and the collar, which opened in the centre on a strong hinge, was around his neck! He struggled to free himself, but he was held, and the collar closed. In an instant a key of peculiar wards inserted in one of the cusps of this devilish necklace, shot a bolt into the socket of the other, and Mr. Lafitte, taking out the key, and putting it into his pocket, quietly spat in the face of the man whose neck he had just fettered, and spurning him violently with his foot, hurled him backward from his knees with a dreadful shock over on the floor.
Stunned for a moment, Antony lay motionless on his side. He knew that his master had risen, for as he turned his head, he saw the hideous shadow dart suddenly from the pool, and vanish, as though it had entered the planter. On his feet the next instant, with a dark cloud of blood bellowing in his brain, he saw with bloodshot eyes, Lafitte standing before him, with a calm, infernal smile on his visage, and all the tiger in his tawny orbs. The next second Madame Lafitte swept, like a superb ghost, between him and his revenge.
“Stay, Josephine,” yelled the planter, his voice no longer issuing smooth and soft from the throat, but tearing up from his lungs in a loud, harsh snarl—“remain here. This entertainment is for you. You object to the howls of my black curs. I bring one here—into this room—whose howls shall split your ears.”
She turned, as he spoke, on the threshold of the room, and advancing toward him, paused. For one instant she stood, imperial in her beauty, her magnificent form drawn to its full height, her haughty brow corrugated, her eyes burning like bale-fires, her outraged blood flooding her countenance with one vivid crimson glow. The next instant she strode forward, and smote him a sounding buffet on the face. Then, without a word, and with the step of an empress, she swept from the room.
Lafitte turned purple and livid in spots, and tottering back, fell into his chair. Struck! By her! Before his slave! Glaring up, he met the blood-shot eyes of Antony.
“Dog!” he yelled; “you are there, are you! Wash my spittle from your face with this!”
For a second, Antony stood holding his breath, with the wine the planter had dashed into his face, dripping from him, and steaming in his nostrils. For a second afterward, he stood unwincing, the fragments of the shattered goblet which followed, stinging his flesh. The next, his whole being rose in a wild, red burst of lightning, and the throat of Lafitte was in his right hand, his left crushing back the hand which had struck at him with a bowie-knife as he sprung. With his right knee set solid on the abdomen of the planter, pinning the writhing form to the chair, he saw the devilish face beneath him redden in his gripe, and deepen into horrible purple, and blacken into the visage of a fiend, with bloody, starting eyeballs, and protruding tongue. Still keeping that iron clutch of an aroused manhood on his tyrant’s throat, he heard the mad, hoarse gurgle of his agony, and felt the struggling limbs relax and lose their vigor beneath him. And then yielding to an impulse of compassion his master never knew, and which rose louder than the bellowing voices of his revenge, he unclasped his hold, and saw the body slide flaccid and gasping to the floor.
Away, Antony! The bitter term of your bondage is over, and there is nothing now but Liberty or Death for you! Death? Ay, Death in the land of Liberty for the man who repays long years of outrage with one brave grip on the throttle of his oppressor! Death, when the savage planters muster to avenge their fellow, and drag you down to yon bayou, to shriek and scorch your life away among the sappy fagots of the slow fire! Death like this, or else by gnawing famine, or the beasts and reptiles of the swamp whose beckoning horrors soon must close around you! Liberty or Death—and Liberty a desperate chance, a thousand miles away.
He stood for an instant, panting, with a wild exultation pouring like fire through his veins. Then snatching the heavy bowie-knife from the floor, he sprang from the room, and leaped on the veranda just as the overseer, who had come up again from the fields, had set one foot on the steps to ascend. Flying against him full shock, he threw him backward clear and clean off his feet, and saw his head bounce with a terrific concussion on the grass as he sped on over the stunned body. He did not pause, nor look behind, but flew with the rush of a race-horse for the swamp. The light wind had risen, and the grain in the fields and the scattered trees on either side, and in the skirting woods beyond, and all the lurking shadows, waved, and tossed, and lifted under the sultry vault, as he sped his desperate course, while the hot landscape rushed to meet him, and ran whirling by, closing around and behind him, and seeming to follow as he flew. Across the lawn, its grass and wildflowers sliding dizzily beneath him—up with a flying leap across the fence, which vanished below him—and down with a light shock on the red plantation marl which rose to meet him, and reeled from under him as he bounded on. Away, with frantic speed, over rows of cotton-plants, bruised beneath his feet, and gliding from under him—away, with a wilder leap, as the loud shouts of the slaves in full chorus struck his ear, and he saw them all, men and women, with open mouths and upthrown arms, stand with the mules and ploughs in the field on one side, and vanish from his flying glimpse as he fled by. Away, with every nerve and sinew desperately strung—with his pained heart knocking against his side—with his held breath bursting from him in short gasps—with the sweat reeking and pouring down his body, and dropping in big drops from his face, to be caught upon his clothes in his speed—with the bright knife, as his last refuge, clutched in his grasp—with the one thought of Liberty or Death burning in the whirl of his brain. Past the plantation now, his feet thudding heavily on a hard, black soil—on, with the swarming hum of innumerable insects, murmurously swirling by—on, with the light and rapid current of the hot south wind cool on the pain and fervor of his face, and swiftly purring in his ears—on, over rushing grass and flowers, and stunted shrubs and butts of trees—up again with a furious leap over a fence that sinks, and down again with a heavy thump on ground that rises—on and away at headlong speed over a field of monstrous stumps, scattering the light chips as he flies—in now with a bound among the bright-green leaves of a thick palmetto bottom, and on with a rush through the swish, swish, swish of their loud and angry rustle, as he crashes forward to the still gleam of the bayou. Now his feet swash heavily on a grassy turf that yields like sponge, and water fills his shoes at every bound. Now the water deepens, and he sinks above his ankles or midway to his knees, as he splashes forward with headlong velocity, half-conscious and wholly careless in his desperate exultation that black venomous water-snakes writhe up behind him as he plunges through their pools. Now he bounds over a bank of black mire, and swerves in his course as something like a dirty log changes to an alligator, and lumbers swiftly toward him with yawning jaws. And now splashing through the green slime of the margin, he bursts with a plunge into the glistening waters of the bayou, and swims with vigorous strokes, while the gaunt bittern on the bank beyond scrambles away with squawking screams. Swimming till the water shoals, he flounders on again through slime to mire, and over another bog of pools and water-plants and spongy sod, till gaining the outskirts of the dense forest, and reaching a patch of damp, black earth under an enormous cypress-tree, he slackens his pace, stops suddenly, and throwing up his arms upon the trunk, drops his head upon them, panting and blowing—and the first mile-heat of the dreadful race for Liberty or Death is run!