“Will he resist?”
“Possibly. These fugitives usually go armed.”
“What shall we do if he threatens to fire?”
Here an altercation ensued, during which Peek could understand little of what was uttered. But he had heard enough. His thoughts first reverted to his wife and his infant boy, and he pictured to himself their destitute condition in the event of his being taken away. Then the treachery of Charlton glared upon him in all its deformity, and he instinctively drew from the sheath in an inside pocket of his vest a sharp, glittering dagger-like knife. He looked rapidly around, but there was nothing to suggest a mode of escape. The only window in the closet was one over the door communicating with the office.
Suddenly it occurred to him that, if he were to be hemmed in in this closet, his chances of escape would be small. It would be better for him to be in the larger room, whether he chose to adopt a defensive or an offensive policy. Seeing an old rope in a corner of the closet, he seized it with the avidity a drowning man might show in grasping at a straw.
He listened intently once more to the whisperers. A low susurration, accompanied with a whistling sound, he identified at once as coming from Skinner, the captain of the schooner in which he had made his escape. Then some one sneezed. Peek would have recognized that sneeze in Abyssinia. It must have proceeded from Colonel Delancy Hyde.
Standing on tiptoe on a coal-box, the negro now looked through a hole in the green-paper curtain covering the glass over the door, and surveyed the whole party. He found he was right in his conjectures. The captain was there with one of his sailors,—an old inebriate by the name of Biggs, both doubtless ready to swear to the slave’s identity. And the Colonel was there as natural as when he appeared on the plantation, strolling round to take a look at the “smart niggers,” so as to be able to recognize them in case of need. Two policemen, armed with bludgeons, and probably with revolvers; and Charlton, with a paper tied with red tape in his hand, formed the other half of this agreeable company. Peek marked well their positions, put his knife between his teeth, and descended from the box.
Colonel Delancy Hyde is a personage of too much importance to be kept waiting while we describe the movements of a slave. Colonel Delancy Hyde must be attended to first. Tall, lank, and gaunt in figure, round-shouldered and stooping, he carried his head very much after the fashion of a bloodhound on the scent. Beard and moustache of a reddish, sandy hue, coarse and wiry, concealed much of the lower part of a face which would have been pale but for the floridity which bad whiskey had imparted. The features were rather leonine than wolfish in outline (if we may believe Mr. Livingstone, the lion is a less respectable beast than the wolf). But the small brownish eyes, generally half closed and obliquely glancing, had a haughty expression of penetration or of scorn, as if the person on whom they fell would be too much honored by a full, entire regard from those sublime orbs.
The Colonel wore a loosely fitting frock-coat and pantaloons, evidently bought ready made. They were of a grayish nondescript material which he used to boast was manufactured in Georgia. He generally carried his hands in his pockets, and bestowed his tobacco-juice impartially on all sides with the abandon of a free and independent citizen who has not been used to carpets.
There were two things of which Colonel Delancy Hyde was proud: one, his name, the other, his Virginia birth. It is interesting to trace back the genealogy of heroes; and we have it in our power to do this justice to the Colonel.