A moment later there was no question in Hitch’s mind which way the Mississippi River was flowing, for Hitch was swimming noiselessly across the current toward the opposite shore. But the Father of Waters is no quiet mill-pond. The pressure of its mighty current is the push of every drop of water falling between the Rockies and the Alleghanies and the inflow of the rivers between. That current carried Hitch down the stream, in spite of his most powerful efforts to resist it.
Several men ran out on the levee and threw their lantern rays across the water.
Hitch promptly turned on his back and floated, riding the current as motionless as a log. When the light left the water, Hitch struggled on, fighting the dark, muddy stream.
Suddenly the water swept him against one of the immense cypress braces of the revetment levee. He seized it, almost dead with weariness. He realized that he was not twenty feet from the shore he had left, and but a short distance from the mob. But this revetment offered a hiding place, and he grasped it eagerly.
The voices of the mob came to him distinctly across the water.
“Befo’ Gawd, white folks, you-alls ain’t got me right!” the hopeless captive wailed. “I ain’t done nothin’ a-tall! All you white mens knows Dude Blackum—dat’s me! I lives in de cabin jest up ferninst de mill-pond, an’ wucks on a farm fer my livin’!”
“Shut up!”
The crowd which had fought and been defeated by Hitch Diamond was in no mood to listen to the explanations of another negro. A long, wailing cry was Dude Blackum’s answer, and the mob moved on.
Suddenly there was a whoop, a clatter of pistol shots, a howling mob swarming over the levee, a splash of water, and a number of voices:
“Catch him! Head him off there! Kill him!”