"Jesus, maybe," the negro answered, looking at her, his eyes full of tears.
The great Breakwater, which required forty years and nearly a million tons of stone to build it, was then just commencing, and where it was to be, within the shallow bight of Henlopen, they saw the wrecks of many vessels, some sunken, some shattered in collision, some stranded in the marsh, proving the needs of commerce for such a work, and also the fury of the storm that had so innocently vanished, like a sleeping tiger after his bloody meal.
In the gentle sunshine floated the American flag upon several vessels there—the flag that first kissed the breeze upon that spot in the year 1776, when Esek Hopkins raised over the Alfred the dyes of the peach and cream in the centre of his little squadron. And there, along the low bluff of the Kill, still lay the shingle-boarded town of Lewes, in the torpor of nearly two hundred years, or since the Dutch De Vries had settled it in 1631. Lord Delaware, Argall, and the Swede, Penn, Blackbeard, Paul Jones, Lord Rodney, a thousand heroes, had known it well; the pilots, like sea-gulls, had their nests there; the Marylanders had invaded it, the Tories had seized it, pirates had been suckled there; and now the courts and lawyers had forsaken it, to go inland to Georgetown.
"Virgie," said Samson, "I'll try to buy some of de stone-boat captains to carry you to Phildelfy."
He waded the Kill, carrying her, and left her in an old Presbyterian church at the skirt of Lewes, and procured medicine for her, and then labored in vain nearly all day to get her passage to a free state. The reply was invariable: "Can't take the risk of the whippin'-post and pillory for no nigger. Can't lose a long job like bringin' stone to the Breakwater to save one nigger."
At the hotel a colored man beckoned Samson aside—a fine-looking man, of a gingerbread color—and they went into the little old disused court-house, in the middle of a street, where there was a fire.
"Brother," said the stranger, "I see by your actions that you're trying to git a passage North. Is it fur yourself?"
"No," Samson said, taking an inventory of the other's fine chest and strength, and mentally wishing to have a chance at him; "I'm a free man, and kin go anywhere; but I have a friend."
"Why, old man," spoke the other, frankly, "I'm the agent of our society at this pint."