Cyrus and Neal were making across the clearing in the direction of the camp-fire with revived spirits, when the American suddenly grabbed his friend by the arm, and drew him behind a clump of low bushes.
“Hold on a minute!” he whispered. “By all that’s glorious, there’s Uncle Eb singing his favorite song! It’s worth hearing. You never listened to such music in England.”
“I don’t suppose I ever did,” answered Neal, suppressed laughter making him shake.
Upon a gray pine stump, beside the blaze, which he was feeding with a hemlock bough, sat a battered-looking yet lively personage. Had he been standing upright upon the remnant of trunk, he would certainly, in the bright but changeful firelight, have deceived an onlooker into believing him to be a continuation of it; for the baggy tweed trousers which he wore on his immense legs, and which partially hid his loose-fitting brogans, or woodsman’s boots, his thick, knitted jersey, his mop of woolly hair, with the cap of coon’s fur that adorned it, were a striking mixture of grays, all bordering upon the color of the stump. His skin, however, was a fine contrast, shining as he bent towards the flame like the outside of a copper kettle. In daylight it would be three shades darker, because the thick coral lips, gleaming teeth, and prominent, friendly eyes of the individual, betrayed him to be in his own words, “a colored gen’leman;” that is, a full-blooded negro, and a free American citizen.
Beside him, squatting upon his haunches and wagging his shaggy tail, was a good-sized dog, not of pure breed, but undoubtedly possessed of fire and fidelity, as was shown by the eye he raised to his master. His red coat and general formation showed that his father had been an Irish setter, though he seemed to have other and fiercer blood in his veins, mingling with that of this gentle parent.
To him the negro was chanting a war-song,—some lines by a popular writer which he had found in an old newspaper, and had set to a curious tune of his own composition, rendering the performance more inspiriting by sundry wild whoops, and an occasional whacking of his teeth together.
Here are two verses, under the influence of which the dog worked himself up to such excitement that he seemed to feel the ghosts of rabbits slain—for he could smell no live ones—hovering near him:—
“I raise my gun whar de rabbit run—
Ketch him, Tiger, ketch him!
En de rabbit say:
‘Gimme time ter pray,
Fer I ain’t got long fer to stay, to stay!’
Oh, ketch him, Tiger, ketch him!
“Ketch him, oh, ketch him!
Run ter de place en fetch him!
De bell done chime
Fer de breakfast time—
Oh, ketch him, Tiger, ketch him!”
“If there are any more verses, Uncle Eb, keep them until we’ve had supper, or breakfast, or whatever you like to call a meal at this unearthly hour. I’m so hungry that I could chew nails!” cried Cyrus, springing from behind the bushes, and reaching the, camp-fire with a few strides, Neal following him.
“Sakes alive! yonkers; is dat you?” cried the darkey, uprearing his gray figure. “I’se mighty glad to see you back. Whar’s yer meat? Left it in de canoe mebbe? De buck too big to drag ’long to camp—eh?”