How long he had been immured he did not know. Count time by anguish, and it might have been centuries. Fearful of discovering himself till he was too far from the land from which he had fled to be returned, he had resolved to endure till endurance became impossible. For this he had clung to life, for this he had silently borne the horrors of his tomb, for this he had striven a hundred times against the desire to end his imprisonment by shouting aloud to those above him. Now when heavy torpor and gradual giddiness were stealing upon him, and the instinct of his soul told him death was drawing near, he roused himself for the long deferred effort.
The ship was staggering heavily, and he heard the trampling of feet on the deck as, with dizzily reeling brain, he feebly and slowly crawled up on his hands and knees. His strength was almost gone. An infant newly born could have been hardly more helpless than he found himself. He slowly lifted one hand to lay it on the bales beside him—lifted it a few inches like something over which he had no command—and it fell heavily, and losing his balance he tumbled down on his side. An awful feeling stole across his mind that he had delayed too long—that his resolution had outlived his physical powers. Turning over on his back, feebly panting, slowly suffocating, he drew in his breath for a wild cry for help. It rushed from him in a hoarse whistling whisper. His voice had left him!
He lay still now, painfully breathing, but resigned to die. Quietly—quietly—the fears and desires of the present, the hopes of the future withdrew, and the vision of all his past floated softly through his tranquil brain. It faded, and he lay rushing on a fast-rushing tide, and dilated with a wonderful and mystic change. Power and beauty and joy ineffable began to glow and spread divinely through his being with the vague beauteous glimmer of a transcendant life afar. All fierce and dark and sorrowful passions and emotions gone—all sense of pain and horror and disgust fled forever—himself happier, greater, nobler than he had ever dreamed—he lay swiftly drifting to the last repose.
What sound was it that jarred so dully on his failing ear? What sudden light was it that fell upon him? What faces were those that looked on him so strangely from above, and vanished with cries that brought down darkness and silence on him once more?
O blue sky of the nineteenth century, what is this? O pale, fresh light streaming into the noisome hold, what is this? O wonder-stricken, silent faces, gazing aghast upon that swart and loathsome figure lying in the shallow well, with an iron collar on its neck, what does this mean?
The men stood staring at the motionless body on the bales below them, and then, lost in a trance of wonder, stared at each other. Their wild amazement at the sight which met their eyes when they had unbattened the hatch, had burst forth in one cry, and then left them still and dumb. Presently there was a sound of heavy, hurrying feet, and the captain, a short, powerfully-built man, came flying over the deck, with strong excitement working in his sun-burnt face, reached the hold, looked in, turned livid with rage, slapped his straw hat down on his head with both hands, and rushed away cursing and raving like a madman. It was highly natural. A commercial Christian of the nineteenth century breed, the captain had been educated to think of nothing but his ship and trade, and his special reflection was of the penalties that would ensue if it became known that he had carried away a slave from New Orleans.
Recovering from their amazement, the sailors, with uncouth and profane ejaculations of horror and pity, lifted the inanimate body of Antony, disgusting even to their rude senses, and touching even to their rude sensibilities, out of the hold. They had hardly laid it on deck when the captain came rushing back again, shouting with oaths an order for a look-out up aloft, with the hope of meeting some vessel bound for the city he had left that would take the slave back. Then giving the prostrate body a furious kick, he rushed away again, storming and stamping and swearing.
At the direction of the mate, the sailors took the faintly-breathing body of Antony forward to the galley, where the black cook busied himself in reviving the fugitive. Half a dozen times a day the captain came to the spot where the feeble man reclined, and glared at him without saying a word. On the third day, Antony being then weak but able to stand and talk, the captain demanded him to give an account of himself.
Feebly standing before him, with all the vigor gone from his emaciated form, and with the deep marks of awful suffering graven on his wasted lineaments, Antony told his story. As he finished, imploring the captain in earnest and broken tones not to send him back, the mate, who stood by, turned away with his mouth twitching, saying it was a damned shame. The captain burst into a fit of passion, and stamped on the deck, gesticulating with clenched hands.
“A damned shame, is it, Mr. Jones?” he roared, perfectly livid with rage. “I should think it was! Rather! A blasted nigger to smuggle his ugly carcass aboard my brig—what d’ye think they’ll say about it at Orleans, and what’ll they do about it, Mr. Jones, and what’ll Atkins say when he hears of it, Mr. Jones, and a load of cotton aboard from the very house whose junior partner owns this dingy curse, Mr. Jones! Look at the name of the house on his neck, man. Blast ye,” he howled, turning upon Antony, and shaking both fists at him, “I’d send ye back, you beggar, if they were to fry ye in your own black blood when they got ye! Send ye back? If I don’t, may I be eternally”—