“Us pore niggers!” the chorus howled. “O Gawd, de birds of de air an’ de beasts of de field is sot ag’in’ us, an’ ef you don’t he’p us, we is blowed up blacks!”
“Dar won’t be nothin’ left of us but remainders!” Vinegar amended. “Some of us ain’t never axed you fer nothin’ befo’, an’ we ain’t never aimin’ to pester you agin. But we needs you now, Lawd—dis here is a groun’-hawg case!”
“A groun’-hawg—case!” the negroes wailed.
“O Lawd, she’s a gittin’ littler an’ littler!” Vinegar whooped. “She’s gwine up—gwine up—gwine up! Don’t go back on us now an’ let her drap down no more! Keep her gwine up!”
“Keep her gwine up!” the mob pleaded.
The animal noises in the swamp had ceased. The wild flight of the birds had taken them somewhere else. The airplane was a tiny speck in the sunset sky. But the mighty emotional crisis through which the negroes had passed left them raving in a delirium and acting like maniacs.
Vinegar Atts was temporarily insane. The other negroes were as crazy as bats. So, as they knelt upon the grass of the prairie, they began a mighty antiphony of Biblical quotations, Vinegar leading the vociferation with a voice which shall never be excelled in volume until the angel of time shall stand with one foot on the land and the other on the sea and swear that time shall be no longer.
“I seed a mighty angel come down from heaven, clothed wid a cloud, an’ a rainbow wus upon his head—” Vinegar roared.
“An his face wus as de sun an’ his foots wus pillars of fire!” the crowd answered.
“An’ he helt in his hand a little book—” Vinegar screamed.