By this fire the woman's face was also revealed, and she was so much interested in the fight that she turned all parts of her countenance into the firelight, slapping her hands together, laughing like a man, dropping her oaths at the right places, and crying:
"I bet my money on little Owen Daw! Cy James ain't no good, by God! Yer's whiskey a-plenty for Owen Daw if he gouges him. Give it to him, Owen Daw! Shame on ye, Cy James!"
There was occasional servility and deference to this woman from members of the crowd, however they were absorbed in the fight. She was what is called a "chunky" woman, short and thick, with a rosy skin, low but pleasing forehead, coal-black hair, a rolling way of swaying and moving herself, a pair of large black eyes, at once daring, furtive, and familiar, and a large neck and large breast, uniting the bull-dog and the dam, cruelty and full womanhood.
Behind this woman, whom Phœbus thought to be Patty Cannon herself, the moonlight from the rear came through the door in the older and main building, shining quite through the house, and Phœbus saw that the rear door was also open and was unguarded.
He took the first chance, therefore, of dodging around the corner of the bar, intending to pass around the north gable of the house and dart up the stairs by the unwatched door; but he had barely got out of sight when a loud hurrah burst from the crowd as a feeble voice was heard crying "Enough, enough!" followed by jeers rapidly approaching.
The large outside chimney, where Phœbus now was, had an arched cavity in it large enough to contain a man, being the chimney of two different rooms within, whose smoke, uniting higher up, ascended through one stem. Into this cavity Phœbus dodged, in time to avoid the beaten party to the fight, the grown man, who staggered blindly by towards a well, his face dripping blood, and he was sobbing babyishly; but the concealed sailor heard him say, in a whining tone:
"She set him on me; I'll make her pay for it."
Several of the partisans or tormentors of this craven followed after him, and Jimmy himself fell in at the rear, and, instead of going with the rest towards the well, where the loser was bathing his face, Phœbus softly stepped over the low sill of the back door, the woman's back being turned to him, and, as he had anticipated, a stairway ascended there out of a large room, which answered the purposes of parlor and hall, dining and gambling room, as Jimmy drank in at one glance, from seeing tables, dishes and cards, bottles and whips, arms and saddles. This stairway had no baluster, and was not safe in the dark for strangers to the house.
Satisfying himself by an interior observation, as he had suspected exteriorly, that there was no cellar under Johnson's tavern, the sailor slipped up the stairs, intent to find where Judge Custis's property and Ellenora's wayward son had been concealed. The second story had a hall, which opened only at the front of the house and upon the upper piazza, and four doors upon this hall indicated four bedrooms. One of them was ajar, and, peeping through, Phœbus saw, extended on a bed, oblivious to all the righting and din outside, Joe Johnson the negro-trader, his form revealed by a lamp and the open fire.
An impulse, immediately repressed, came on the sailor to draw his knife and stab Johnson to the heart, as probably the villain who had shot him from the cat-boat. The negro-trader wearily turned his long length in the bed, and Phœbus slipped back along the hall to the only door besides that was not closed fast, leading into the room at the rear southern corner of the house.