Harrington: A Story of True Love

by William Douglas O'Connor

He turned and looked over the bayou far up the lowland to the plantation a mile away. Suddenly he started, clutching the knife with a firm grasp, his eyes flashing, his teeth and nostrils set, and his manhood once again flooding his heart with fire. Figures near the mansion—figures on horseback, guns, flashing in the sun, in their hands—one, two, three, four, five, six—six mounted horsemen—and, lower down on the lawn, what are those things running in circles? Hark! Far off a long, harsh, savage, yelling bay. The hunt is afoot, and the hounds have struck the trail! Away, Antony, for Liberty or Death!

Eyes flashing, teeth and nostrils set, every nerve and sinew valorously strung, he turned with a leap, and rushed straight into the morass. Before the headlong, desperate courage of his charge, the loathsome tenants of the swamp gave way. Plunging from the floodwood, the affrighted alligator trundled off, and the startled moccasins slipped and writhed from his path at the noise of his coming. Hark, again! Nearer than before the booming yell of the hounds. Speed, Antony! It is the Sabbath of the Lord our God, and we hunt you down. What man shall there be among us that shall have one slave, and if it fly into the morass on the Sabbath day, shall he not set hounds upon it and hunt it down? Speed on, dark chattel! The good Christians of St. Landry and Avoyelles are spurring hard upon your trail, and in the land over which the memory of Christ stretches like the sky, well-doing such as theirs is lawful on the Sabbath as on every other day!

Splashing and swashing on over the slushy surface of the quagmire, now sinking no deeper than the soles of his shoes, now plashing up to his shins, now to his knees, now nearly to his thighs, now bounding upon logs and fallen trunks, or rushing over masses of brushwood and briers, which switched and stung his ankles, he could still hear, at brief intervals, the savage yowling of the hounds. As yet there was no safety, for the dogs could still scent his trail, here and there, on the shoals of mire or clumps of bog over which he had passed. His hope was in reaching deeper water, or arriving at some broad bayou which would effectually impede their course. Goaded by his imminent peril, for he soon heard the long yells much nearer, and knew that the cruel brutes were rapidly gaining on him—he floundered frantically on, his heart leaping in his throat at every howl, and the sweat gathering in cold drops on his face. Soon, to his great joy, the foul lagoons began to deepen, the water reaching more uniformly above his knees, and at length he came upon a space through which he floundered for more than half an hour, sinking to his thighs at every plunge, and knew by the confused and lessening clamor of the dogs, that he was leaving them. He did not slacken his pace, though the depth of the water made it still more difficult to travel, till at last he entered a horrid grove of gloom, where the pyramidal clumps from which shot up the straight, dark pillars of the cypresses, were submerged in the inky flood, and sinking above his hips, he was forced to move more slowly. Fiercely plunging on through the cold black tarn, over a soft bottom of leaves and moss, which sank loathsomely beneath his tread, like a subfluvial field of sponge, he heard again the harsh yells of the dogs, and they now seemed nearer than before. He strove, but vainly, to move on faster, and his fancy ran riot as he thought of the hounds slopping on through the fen, and coming into sight of him. Already, in his delirious fancy, he heard the wild and savage yowls of that moment, and the exulting halloos of his pursuers. The dogs would leap into the shallow ponds—they would swim faster than he could wade—he would hear their savage panting close behind him—he would turn and feel them flop upon him, and their sharp teeth crush into his flesh—he would strike them with his bowie-knife—he would see the black water redden with their blood—they would overbear him and drag him down with yelling, and howling, and frantic splashing and struggling, while the shouting planters would come riding through the swamp and seize him. Lashed into frenzy by the anticipated drama, he brandished the knife, with a hoarse cry, and staggering forward, suddenly sank to his arm-pits. An instant of alarm, succeeded by wild joy, for the water had deepened, and striking out, he swam. Clogged by his heavy shoes, now filled with mud, and soaked to an added weight with water, it was hard swimming; but his fear and fury gave him superhuman energy, and nerved with unnatural vigor his weakened thews. He swam for a long time, with the solemn night of the dense cypress dusking his form and shadowing the tarn. At length the dreadful twilight of the grove began to lighten, and far beyond he saw the sunlight illuminating the grey and green of the trees, and the many colored parasites and flowers, and shining on the mud and water of the marsh. Presently he struck bottom, and wading again for a long distance, emerged at length into the sunlight, among the shallows and mud-shoals, and rushed on as before, till at last, as the sun was near its setting, he stood on the banks of an unknown river, which, whispering sullenly past its margin of sedge and water-flowers, moved, with an imperceptible motion, through the solemn and horrible wilderness of forest.

He stood gazing across it with a haggard and mournful countenance. The croak of frogs came faintly from its border, and mingled with the distant quacking of crowds of mallard ducks from the opposite shore, the vague hooting of owls in the swamp beyond, and the occasional plunge of an alligator from the adjacent margin. Dreary and ominous sounds, which yet hardly disturbed the stagnant stillness around him. The wind had lulled, and no whisper came from the bearded trees, which stood like boding shapes on every side. Hope was faint in the heart of the fugitive. Relieved from the engrossment of the immediate peril, his spirit began to come under the sole dominion of the brooding horrors around him, and as he vainly pondered on the dark problem of his deliverance, Death seemed ever gathering slowly toward him, and Liberty lessening in ever-growing distance.

Liberty or Death. The historic phrase came to him again like a voice that urged him forward. He paused only a little longer, to tear a strip from his coarse shirt and tie the bowie-knife at the back of his neck to the iron collar. Then tearing another strip, he pulled off his heavy brogans, shook the mud out of them, and passing the strip through the eyelets, he also secured them to the collar, one on each shoulder. So accoutred, he braced himself anew for effort, and taking up a slender sapling from the ground to beat the pools between him and the bayou—for he now feared the moccasins—in a few moments he was in the water, steadily swimming forward, with the sapling held in his teeth.

Gaining the opposite bank, he stopped on a patch of black mire, to put on his shoes, and then went forward, beating the path before him. Dreadful apprehensions of the beasts and reptiles which inhabited the swamp, now crowded on his mind, while to add to his distress, the sunlight in the forest spaces was stealing rapidly upward from the foliage of the loftiest trees. Quickening his pace, he staggered on through the haunted dusk of the tree-trunks, with the hooting of the swamp owls, the quacking of innumerable ducks, the bellowing and plunging of alligators, the screeching and screaming of strange, semi-tropic birds, the howling of distant beasts, and the multitudinous croak of frogs, sounding on every side around him.

He broke into a heavy run, came at length to a thinner part of the forest, and presently emerged upon a vast open space of quagmire, stretching two or three miles away, with scattered trees standing and leaning in all directions in its broad expanse. Here he paused.

The sun had sunk behind the distant forest, tinging the misty sky far up the zenith with lowering red, and suddenly, as by some fell enchantment, the swamp had become a sullen slough of blood. Shadows of inky blackness stretched athwart the red expanse, and the distorted trees that crossed and intercrossed each other here and there, were giant eldritch shapes of unimaginable things. Lank and hairy—all askew and bristling—clothed as with fearful rags—with monstrous heads ahunch in unnatural places, and shaggy jags of drooping beards, and dusky arms grotesquely forked and twisted, and huge lengths of gaunt body that abruptly splayed and sprawled in malformed feet—they loomed from the fen of murky gore against the angry color of the sky, like some black congress of ambiguous mongrel wizards whose spell was on the scene. All around beneath them, protruding from the red lagoons, huge butts of logs, gnarled stumps, and black knees of cypress, squatted and crouched like water-fiends. Through the dusky air, laden with the damp smell of the swamp, frightful brown bats whirled clacking to and fro in the red light like lesser demons on the wing. From every side came hootings and croakings, screechings and wailings, howlings and bellowings and sullen plunges, like the riotous clamor of devils at some tremendous incantation. A sense of supernatural horror pervaded all, and weighed upon the appalled heart of the trembling fugitive.

He hesitated a few moments whether to cross this dreary expanse, or strike off into the denser forest, but decided to go forward. Whipping a pool before him which did not move, he was just setting his foot in it, when the venomous face of a moccasin rose at him with a dark slapping flash. He sprang back simultaneously, and saw the monster vanish, feeling at the same time a sharp pang just above his ankle. He was bitten! All was over!

Stooping slowly, with a wild terror shuddering through his veins, he looked at the wounded limb. But no, there was no bite. The snake had missed him. In his backward leap, he had struck his leg against the upturned spike of a broken branch which lay behind him. The revulsion in his spirit at this discovery was so great that he broke into a quaver of hysterical laughter, which echoed dismally through the swamp, and woke such an answering chorus of demoniacal hooting and screeching in the adjacent boughs, that he was affrighted, and turning away from the open space, he was about to rush into the forest on his flank, when he saw with a leap of heart, two round glistening balls in the dark foliage of a tree a few yards before him, and something long and dark crouching along the bough. It was a panther! He wheeled at once with a bound, and fled headlong into the red morass.