He raised his eyes only with a profound effort. They encountered a blackboard affixed to the fat trunk of the Preaching Tree, on which from day to day the parson wrote the text for its preachments in colored chalk. The moon was full upon it, and Rackby saw in crimson lettering the words, "Woman, hath no man damned thee?" The rest of the text he had rubbed out with his own shoulders in turning to take the girl into his arms.
"I damn ye!" he cried, raising his arms wildly. "Yes, by the Lord, I damn ye up and down. May you burn as I burn, where the worm dieth not, and the fires are not quenched."
So saying, he set his foot down deliberately on the first of the light footprints she had made in springing from his side—as if he might as easily as that blot out the memory of his enslavement.
Thereafter the Customs House twitted him, as if it knew the full extent of his shame. Zinie Shadd called after him to know if he had heard that voice from the sea yet, in his comings and goings.
"Peter Loud was not so easy hung by the heels," that aged loiterer affirmed, "shipping as he did along with the lady herself, as bo's'n for Cap'n Sam Dreed."
Jethro Rackby took to drink somewhat, to drown these utterances, or perhaps to quench some stinging thirst within him which he knew not to be of the soul.
When certain of the elders asked him why he did not cut the drink and take a decent wife, he laughed like a demon, and cried out:
"What's that but to swap the devil for a witch?"
Others he met with a counter question:
"Do you think I will tie a knot with my tongue that I can't untie with my teeth?"