"That's so,—it's enough to make a fellow pray," was the answer.
Here Russell, putting up his hand, took hold of Jim's brawny black one with a gesture gentle as a woman's. It hurt him to hear his faithful friend even spoken to harshly. All this, while the hideous shower of death was dropping about them; the water was ebbing, ebbing,—falling and running out fast to sea, leaving them higher and drier on the sands; the gray dawn was steadily brightening into day.
At this fearful pass a sublime scene was enacted. "Sirs!" said a voice,—it was Jim's voice, and in it sounded something so earnest and strange, that the men involuntarily turned their heads to look at him. Then this man stood up,—a black man,—a little while before a slave,—the great muscles swollen and gnarled with unpaid toil, the marks of the lash and the branding-iron yet plain upon his person, the shadows of a lifetime of wrongs and sufferings looking out of his eyes. "Sirs!" he said, simply, "somebody's got to die to get us out of dis, and it may as well be me,"—plunged overboard, put his toil-hardened shoulders to the boat; a struggle, a gasp, a mighty wrench,—pushed it off clear; then fell, face foremost, pierced by a dozen bullets. Free at last!
CHAPTER XVI
"Ye died to live."
BOKER
The next day Jim was recounting this scene to some men in camp, describing it with feeling and earnestness, and winding up the narration by the declaration, "and the first man that says a nigger ain't as good as a white man, and a damn'd sight better'n those graybacks over yonder, well"—
"Well, suppose he does?"—interrupted one of the men.
"O, nothing, Billy Dodge,—only he and I'll have a few words to pass on the subject, that's all"; doubling up his fist and examining the big cords and muscles on it with curious and well-satisfied interest.
"See here, Billy!" put in one of his comrades, "don't you go to having any argument with Jim,—he's a dabster with his tongue, Jim is."