“What will they do next?” I said to myself.
Apparently they had no plans, for Hannibal looked reproachfully at his son and shook his head at him, his lips moving, and in a low, husky voice he said—
“Whatebber will I do!”
A way out of the difficulty seemed to come to the younger black, for he suddenly darted at the hat, picked it up, and dabbed it down on the bundle of white and scarlet clothes. Then, whispering a few words to his father—who seemed to be hanging back but to give way at last—the boy ran to the door, dropped down on all fours so as to be hidden by the trees from the house, and glided off almost as rapidly as some four-legged animal.
“The young coward, to run away like that,” I said to myself, as another loud cry of “Pompey, Pompey! Where are you?” came from the front of the house.
“Poor old Hannibal!” I thought to myself, as I saw the utterly cowed object before me, so strangely contrasted with the dignified being a short time back in uniform, that I could hardly restrain my merriment.
But I did not laugh out, for I was sorry for the poor fellow, and tried to think of some way of extricating him from his difficulty, as he stood there with the uniform huddled up in his arms.
Somehow no idea came, only a feeling of anger against the cowardly young scoundrel of a boy, who had left his father in the lurch.
“If it was only he,” I said to myself, “I’d glory in seeing old Sarah pull his ears, a mischievous young dog!”
But there was Hannibal before me, and whenever I looked in the poor fellow’s face I never could help a feeling of respectful liking for the unhappy slave whom I had seen lying half dead upon the bank of the stream when we first brought him ashore.