“Yer may bet high on that, Mr. Vance! How I used ter cuss the Abolishuners, an’ go ravin’ mahd over the meddlin’ Yankees! Wall, what d’yer think war the best thing South Kerliny could do fur me, after never off’rin’ me a chance ter larn ter read an’ write? I’ll tell yer what the peculiar prermoted me ter. I riz to be foreman uv of a rat-pit.”
“Of a what?” interrogated Vance.
“Of a rat-pit. There war a feller in Charleston who kept a rat-pit, whar a little tareyer dog killed rats, so many a minute, to please the sportin’ gentry an’ other swells. Price uv admission one dollar. The swells would come an’ bet how many rats the dog would kill in a minute,—’t was sometimes thirty, sometimes forty, and wunst ’t was fifty. My bus’ness was ter throw the rats, one after another, inter the pit. We’d a big cage with a hole in the top, an’ I had ter put my bar hand in, an’ throw out the rats fast as I could, one by one. The tareyer would spring an’ break the backs uv the varmints with one jerk uv his teeth. Great bus’ness fur a white man,—warn’t it? So much more genteel than plantin’ an’ hoein’! Wall, I kept at that pleasant trade five yars, an’ then lost my place ’cause both hands got so badly bit I couldn’t pull out the rats no longer.”
“You must have seen things from a bad stand-point, my friend.”
“Bad as ’t was, ’t was better nor the slavery stand-pint I kum ter next. Yer’v heerd tell uv Jeff McTavish? Wall, Jeff hahd an overseer who got shot in the leg by a runaway swamp nigger, an’ so I was hired as a sort uv overseer’s mate. I warn’t brung up ter be very tender ’bout niggers, Mr. Vance; but the way niggers was treated on that air plantation was too much even for my tough stomach. I’ve seen niggers shot down dead by McTavish fur jest openin’ thar big lips to answer him when he was mad. There warn’t ten uv his slaves out uv a hunderd, that warn’t scored all up an’ down the back with marks uv the lash.”[[27]]
“Did you whip them?” inquired Vance.
“I didn’t do nothin’ else; but I did it slack, an’ McTavish he found it out, and begun jawin’ me. An’ I guv it to him back, and we hahd it thar purty steep, an’ bymeby he outs with his revolver, but I war too spry for him. I tripped him up, an’ he hahd ter ask pardon uv a mean white wunst in his life, an’ no mistake. A little tahmrin’ water, please.”
Vance administered a spoonful, and the patient resumed his story.
“In coorse, I hahd ter leave McTavish. Then fur five years I’d a tight time of it keepin’ wooded up. What with huntin’ and fishin’, thimble-riggin’ an’ stealin’, I got along somehow, an’ riz ter be a sort uv steamboat gambler on the Misippy. ’T was thar I fust saw you, Mr. Vance.”
“On the Mississippi! When and where?”