Suiting the action to the word, he worked his own black forefinger within my little soft baby clasp, then suddenly but gently withdrawing it asked:
"Ain't she got nare rabbit foot, Mistis? She ain't! De-Lord-sakes-alive! Po' li'l misfortunate thing—agwine on fo' weeks ole en ain't never had a rabbit's foot! Well, she shan't be widout one no longer. No, dat she shan't. She shall have a rabbit's foot dis ve'y minute. Yas'm, I got a fresh one in my snake-skin bag I kilt wid my two-time (double-barrel) gun last Chuesday jest 'fo' sundown en jest ez hit wuz gwine lipperty-clip, lipperty-clip, 'cross de briahs over Liza-Malindy's grave. Liza-Malindy, you know, was my fifth wife. I wish hit had been runnin' 'cross one er de men-folkses' graves en dat I had kilt hit of a Friday night 'stead of a Chuesday. Den co'se, dar'd a been a heap mo' luck in hit. But hit's de best I kin do now for de po' li'l thing en hit's a heap better dan havin' no rabbit's foots at all."
Running his hand down into his breeches pocket he pulled out his rattlesnake-skin bag, filled with charms against "hoodoos en cunjers," and selected from the gruesomeness a blood-stained rabbit's foot and, lifting my little clenched fingers one by one, he closed them around it. Thus, perhaps, he saved me from that most loathsome fault, "stinginess," and insured for me, even though the talisman was of a "Chuesday's" killing, sprinting over a woman's instead of a man's briar-grown home, at least a minimum amount of good luck.
But for the superstitious and fascinating tales, silken-woven by the tongue of fancy, and the awesome shadows cast by authenticated tragedies, Sandy Bottom, where I met my sable godfather, Frenigike, and received my first security against ill luck, would have been nothing but an insignificant little valley in the wildwood, crossed by a quiet looking stream. In its dread death-bed, by the side of priests and Indians, fair-haired maidens and dark-eyed savages, sleep the wife and children and servants of an English nobleman. The infant child, because of its appealing helplessness, alone was saved, while the great strong horses and the coach with its freight of human lives, gold and silver and jewels, were swallowed by the treacherous quicksand.
This tragedy occurred in the year 1799, when Sir Henry Clinton formed the plan of humbling the pride and destroying the resources of Virginia. He sent a powerful fleet to Hampton Roads and landed a force under General Mathews to advance and perfect this project. General Mathews took possession of Norfolk and Portsmouth and the surrounding country, burning Suffolk and committing depredations everywhere. The family of an English nobleman, frightened by the devastation, fled for safety to a point on the Nansemond where a part of the English fleet was lying in waiting. Passing Sandy Bottom the driver stopped to water his horses. He was urging them farther up stream where the water was deeper and clearer, when a runaway negro named Isaac sprang from the bank, shrieking out a warning of the terrible quicksand. His warning being disregarded, he snatched the sleeping baby from the nurse's arms, saying:
"Dis po' li'l chile can't he'p itse'f en I gwine to sabe it anyhow fum bein' gulched down dat quicksandy debil's th'oat, ef de yuthers won't be sabed."
Before the last echo had followed the negro's words—before the frightened child could catch breath for another shriek—carriage, horses, driver, footmen, maids, children and mistress were all sucked in by the dark water. A few bubbles here and there were the only sign of its treachery. The horrified riders had followed so close that the dash of their horses' feet splashed the water simultaneously on the screaming child and over the swirling waves which marked the fatal spot of its mother's doom.
As a reward for his warning and for saving the life of the child, Isaac, the negro, was given his liberty and a home—the first of his race ever set free in Virginia—and was thereafter impressively distinguished by the (to those of his own color) opprobrious epithet of "Free-Negro-Isaac." This name was soon jargoned into Frenigike, and afterward, through culture and prosperity, into Freeling, the present family name of the descendants of Frenigike. The old place near Sandy Bottom is still called Free-Nigger-Town.
Past this spot of gruesome history I was borne in the unconsciousness of infancy through the little village of Chuckatuck and beyond until the carriage drew up at my grandmother's door and Uncle Charles, her foreman, came out with the little negroes running after him to welcome us.