“THE FIELD-HANDS DISCUSSED THE MATTER.”
At first the house-servants were sent scurrying about the place hunting for the truants. Then other negroes were pressed into service, until, finally, every negro on the place was engaged in the search, and torches could be seen bobbing up and down in all parts of the plantation. The negroes called and called, filling the air with their musical halloos, but there was no reply save from the startled birds, or from the dogs, who seemed to take it for granted that everybody was engaged in a grand ’possum hunt, and added the strength of their own voices to the general clamor.
While all this was going on, Mrs. Gaston was pacing up and down the long veranda wringing her hands in an agony of grief. There was but one thought in her mind—the river, the RIVER! Her husband in the midst of his own grief tried to console her, but he could not. He had almost as much as he could do to control himself, and there was in his own mind—the RIVER!
The search on the plantation and in its vicinity went on until nearly nine o’clock. About that time Big Sam, one of the plough-hands, who was also a famous fisherman, came running to the house with a frightened face.
“Marster,” he exclaimed, “de boat gone—she done gone!”
“Oh, I knew it!” exclaimed Mrs. Gaston—“the river, the river!”
“Well!” said Doctor Gaston, “the boat must be found. Blow the horn!”
Big Sam seized the dinner-horn and blew a blast that startled the echoes for miles around. The negroes understood this to be a signal to return, and most of them thought that the children had been found, so they came back laughing and singing, and went to the big house to see the children.
“Wh’abouts you fine um, marster?” asked the foreman.