"Push off!" ordered Joe Johnson; "my teeth are most a-chatterin' with the chill that mace cove give me."
He pulled up the anchor, hoisted the jib, and showed such nervous apprehension that Levin subsided to managing the helm, and steered down the thoroughfare, or strait, which, for some distance, wound around the camp-meeting grove.
"Yer's Jack Wonnell comin' with the jug and the dinner. Sha'n't we wait fur him?"
"He's got the kingdom-come cove with him! No; stop for nothing."
But the boat had to stop, as her keel scraped the mud in the almost dry thoroughfare, and a plain island man of benevolent, nearly credulous, face, hailed them, saying, stutteringly:
"Ne-ne-neighbors, do-don't be sc-scared that a-way. We ain't he-eee-thens yer. Br-br-brother Wonnell's bringin' your taters and pone."
"Come on, an' be damned to you?" Johnson cried to Wonnell. "What do we want with this tolabon sauce?"
"Sw-w-wear not a-a-at all!" cried the parson of the islands. "'Twon't l-l-lift ye over l-l-low tide, brother. Stay an' eat, an' t-t-talk a little with us. Why, I have seen that f-f-face before!"
"Never in a gospel-ken before," the slave-dealer muttered, with an oath.
"B-but it can't be him," spoke the island parson, with solemnity. "Ole Ebenezer Johnson died s-s-several year ago."