But weeks passed and McArthur was forced to stay and see himself growing haggard, weak and filthy. It grew cold and the ragged quilts barely sufficed to cover the sand.
At last one day at dusk he determined to make his escape or die. A dense fog had settled down over the island, and in the growing darkness he could scarcely see the guards with their guns pointed over the stockades. It was absolute folly to attempt it, but what was a worm-fed man not willing to attempt? So, as his custom was, he went into his tent, and by his ragged pallet, asked a mercy from his God, and then went out toward the death-line. Well nigh crazed, he thought in the fog he could safely burrow a way unseen under the stockade. He chose a spot midway between a gullah negro (a lowlander from the rice fields of the Combahee) and a mulatto who spoke often of his rights and liberty, and who was as anxious that all should know of his presence as a little game bantam cockerel that has just learned how to crow. Then, kneeling upon the sand, he cautiously began work. A long, lanky man from the mountains of North Carolina saw him and followed:
“Friend, it’s death,” he whispered.
“It doesn’t matter.”
The sand was beginning to fly when he heard a noise as though some one was clambering up the poles of the stockade. Listening, he stared intently in the direction of the noise. A gust of wind had blown off the cap of the Combahee negro, and by means of a rope he was letting himself down to get it.
Was it a mercy?
At least it was a chance.
Stealing up in the darkness he slapped his hand on the guard’s shoulder.
“To whom do you belong, Jim?”
Taken by surprise, and noting instinctively the white man’s voice, the thin veneer of freedom and egotism wore off.