“You go to ——! We’re going to fix you pretty soon;” and beating him with their guns, they dragged him out at the front door, and down Main and Market streets, to a place where fifty or sixty ruffians (“the good people of South Carolina”) stood shoulder to shoulder in a circle, and backed by a crowd of hundreds, were guarding thirty or forty other unarmed captives.
A demoniac howl of delight arose from the drunken, blood-thirsty throng on his approach; and as each victim arrived, the “high-toned gentleman” and “chivalrous General and his aids applauded their subordinates with—“Good! boys, good! (with oaths). Turn your hounds loose, and bring the last nigger in! Can’t you find that—Capt. Doc?”
There Corporal Free found his first and second lieutenants, and with them and the others he was compelled to sit down in the dust of the street.
While Capt. Doc stood at the back of Marmor’s office, undecided which way to flee, and hearing the work of destruction and the pleadings of the captured man within, he looked across the gardens to his own house, and saw it all alight, and men there breaking furniture, pictures and mirrors dashing upon the floor, and destroying beds and clothing. They had also commenced to scour the entire square for their prey.
He leaped a fence which separated Marmor’s back yard from his garden, and as he did so a gruff voice called “Halt!”
At the same instant the old time slave-hunter Baker, rushed from Dan Lemfield’s back door, pistol in hand, and fired.
“—— —— him! I’ve got him!” said the gray-haired sinner, as he stooped to examine what had a moment before been the habitation of an immortal soul, now fled for protection to the High Court of the Universe.
Urged by his host, the old man re-entered the house, repeating as a sweet morsel to his tongue, “I’ve got him! I’ve got him!” though ignorant what “nigger” he had got.
But had he?