We went down the path to the boats, and thought out which to take when the time came, and found the place where the oars were thrust among the reeds, for a poor attempt to hide them, if that were meant. One of the boats was covered on the bottom with oysters in their knotted shells. We were glad enough of that, and carried maybe half a bushel into the thicket, and fell to breakfasting on them, feeling more cheerful, though raw oysters in a damp thicket of a misty morning are no luxury.
I woke from a sleep, that I thought had been short and surely was uncomfortable, to hear a voice shouting from the path to someone down by the pier.
“Hey, landlo'd!” it said. “Can I put up a bill on your post?” and I thought it was familiar, but could not place it. Calhoun was motioning me to lie still. The steps of several men crunched the sand on the beach, and the speaker went to meet them. The “landlo'd” seemed to be deaf, and spoke very loudly himself.
“Wha'd you say? What you got there?”
They probably stood in a group at the end of the path, and the first speaker read his “bill” aloud, the others perhaps reading too, for I caught only certain words: “Reward—forty years—slim, lively—boy—well grown—Redwood, South Ca'lina”; and then it came upon me that he was reading a placard and description of Calhoun and me, and that himself was no other than Gerry, the steersman. That was unpleasant, but I wished he would read the description more clearly and read it all.
“Well, now,” said the landlord, “tha's a circumstance, ain't it?”
He seemed to be appealing to the others about him, for there was a murmur which amounted to agreement that it was a circumstance. “Why, I'm reckonin' you're near the right track. Eh? Why, Major Sandfo'd—You know him?”
“Ho.”
“Eh? Where'd you come from? Major Sandfo'd, Sandfo'd Plantation. He rode th'ough here las 'night; said your men came up by the canal an' got loose below his place somewhere an' mos' bu'nt up the canal boat. Eh? He said he thought he saw someone on the road, but mought a' been wrong, 'cause he met his niggers comin' f'om their-meetin', an' they tol' him nobody had passed. Niggers mought lie. Eh? But he didn' find 'em, if he saw 'em. But they came by the canal. Major said so. Don' you know him?”
They all went up the path together making various comments, but the last I heard of Gerry's voice was when he said: