“For the service you would have done me, from my soul I thank you,” he said. “If you would know that I leave you in peace, give yet one solemn assurance before I die.”
“To what?”
“Promise, that they who came with me into your ship shall leave it unharmed, and speedily.”
“Promise, Walter,” said a solemn, smothered voice, in the throng.
“I do.”
“I ask no more.—Now, Reverend Minister of God, perform thy holy office, near my companions. Then ignorance may profit by your service. If I quit this bright and glorious scene, without thought and gratitude to that Being who, I humbly trust, has made me an heritor of still greater things, I offend wittingly and without hope. But these may find consolation in your prayers.”
Amid an awful and breathing silence, the chaplain approached the devoted companions of Wilder. Their comparative insignificance had left them unobserved during most of the foregoing scene; and material changes had occurred, unheeded, in their situation. Fid was seated on the deck, his collar unbuttoned, his neck encircled with the fatal cord, sustaining the head of the nearly helpless black, which he had placed, with singular tenderness and care, in his lap.
“This man, at least, will disappoint the malice of his enemies,” said the divine, taking the hard hand of the negro into his own; “the termination of his wrongs and his degradation approaches; he will soon be far beyond the reach of human injustice.—Friend, by what name is your companion known?”
“It is little matter how you hail a dying man,” returned Richard, with at melancholy shake of the head. “He has commonly been entered on the ship’s books as Scipio Africa, coming, as he did, from the coast of Guinea; but, if you call him S’ip, he will not be slow to understand.”
“Has he known baptism? Is he a Christian?”