“Strip,” said Mr. Tassle.
Antony tried, and was helped roughly by the overseer, who then dashed the bucket of water over his naked body. It revived him, for he presently began to wipe himself feebly with his trowsers. In the midst of this operation, Mr. Tassle seized him, rolled him over from the wet ground to a dry spot, and began to rub his arms and knees vigorously with his horny hand, chewing and expectorating rapidly as he did so. Soon the arrested circulation began to be restored, and Antony, getting his clothes on, was able to walk up and down in a brisk, tottering walk, the calves of his legs loosely shaking, and his legs trembling with exhaustion.
“That’ll do,” said Mr. Tassle, at length; “you’ll be ready for your floggin’ right soon. Here, you dam cuss of a nigger, drink a swallow of this. That’ll set you up.”
Antony took the proffered whisky-flask—Mr. Tassle’s pocket companion—and gulped the liquor. It went to his poor, famished heart like fire, and shot some vigor through his numbed veins.
“Damned if I aint a philanthroper,” growled Mr. Tassle. “Lettin’ a hell-bent cuss of a sooty nigger drink my whisky. No matter. Have it out o’ yer hide, Ant’ny, afore supper time. Now pick up yer feet for the house. Yer master has to settle with yer.”
Antony went on to the house, Mr. Tassle following, and contemplatively regarding, as he spat and chewed, the shaking calves of the negro’s legs, which he had a chance to do, as the old trowsers, too short in the first instance, were now split up the backs, nearly to the knees, and feebly flapped as the slave tottered on. Antony himself, giddy with his long exposure in the sun, and with the glow of the liquor he had drank, felt his poor mind wander a little, and was conscious of nothing so much as of the queer tattered shadow that bobbed around him, and which he half fancied would trip him up if he were to try to run away now.
An indefinite sense, which fell upon him as he entered the house, and slowly walked through the passage, that this guarding shadow had fallen behind and left him, was succeeded by a sense as vague, that the shadow he now saw lurking in the sunlight on the floor beneath his master’s chair, was the same, and that it had gone on before when he came into the passage, and would leap from that place and chase him were he to flee. Dimly conscious of this fancy, he kept his hot eyes fixed upon the shadow—conscious also of a dreadful sullen hatred rising in his heart, and prompting him to spring upon his tyrant and strangle him, though he died for it afterward. Beyond this, he was vaguely aware that Tassle had put something that clanked on the table, and had gone; and that the madame, as he would have called her, was present, sitting very still, and apparently indifferent to him or anything that might happen to him.
Suddenly he heard the smooth and quiet voice of his master, seeming nearer to him than it should have seemed.
“Well, Antony, so it appears that I have a learned nigger on my plantation. Cousin to the learned pig, I suppose. Did you ever hear of the learned pig, Antony?”
“Never did, Marster.”