"Eternal love!" he sighed; "I've lost it."
Chapter XXX.
AFRICA.
The Captain took his place at the reins, his picturesque velvet jacket, wide hat, bright hair, and gay shirt, thighings, belt, and boots, deserving all Patty Cannon's encomiums as he made a polite adieu and threw his whip like a thunderbolt, and a cheer rose from the discarded volunteers loitering about the tavern as he drove Joe Johnson and Levin away.
The road was nearly dead level for five miles, but, being the old travelled road from Laurel and the south to Easton, and pointing towards Baltimore, numerous farms and clearings were seen, and tobacco-fields alternated with the dry corn and new-ploughed wheat patches. Here and there, like a measure of gold poured upon the ground, the yellow ears lay in the gaunt corn-rows, to become the ground meal of the slave and the cattle's winter substance. Joe Johnson's popularity was everywhere apparent, and many a shout was given of, "Good luck to ye, Joe!" "Tote us a nigger back from Delaway, Joe!" "Don't be too hard on them ar black Blue Hen's chickens, Joe!"
Van Dorn was too far above the comprehension of his neighbors, or, indeed, of anybody, to be familiarly addressed, but "Patty Cannon's man" was the term of injured inferiority towards him after he had passed.
At Federalsburg they crossed the branch of the Nanticoke piercing to the centre of Delaware state, and saw one large brick house of colonial appearance dominating the little wooden hamlet, and here, as generally within the Maryland line, hunting negroes was the "lark" or the serious occupation of many an idle or enterprising fellow, who trained his negro scouts like a setter, or more often like a spaniel, and crossed the line on appointed nights as ardently and warily as the white trader in Africa takes to the trails of the interior for human prey.
"Joe," said Van Dorn, "what is to be your disposition of the prisoners we have?"
"All goes with me to Norfolk but one,—the nigger boxer; I burn him alive on Twiford's island. If the white chap is too pickle to sell, I'll throw him overboard; he ain't safe."