“Safe enough, but not agreeable,” he answered. “Ah! if you knew all I have suffered from those men, you would own that I have treated them mildly. I spared their lives for your sake, and partly that I did not wish to have more blood on my hands than I have already; and yet, to effect my purpose, how much deeper may I have to dye them! Every man’s hand is against me, and mine must be against every man. Alas, alas! hard is my lot! Oh! stranger, be thankful to Heaven that you have a white skin and are a free man!”
He spoke in a tone of the bitterest anguish. I tried to console him. Too true, every man’s hand in that country would be against him; not because he had killed a fellow-creature, but because he was attempting to escape from bondage and degradation.
We continued paddling on for some time without speaking, till we came in sight of a collection of log-huts and a landing-place. It was a city, he told me—or at least a city that was to be—with a very fine name—the City of Themistocles, if I recollect rightly.
“I’ll put you on shore there, stranger,” he observed. “There is no one on the quay. They are not early-risers in that place. You can expect no better opportunity of being free of me. There, leap on shore. Say that a negro, in a canoe, took you off an island to which you had swum when the steamer went down, and that after he had landed you here he went on his way. Be wise; say nothing more. The boy understands me?”
Peter nodded.
“Farewell!”
Marcus put out his hand. I shook it warmly. We exchanged no other words. I sprang on shore, followed by Peter and Ready, and the canoe glided away down the stream, and was soon out of sight. We sat down on some logs piled up ready for the steamers, and Ready, conceiving that he had for the present done his duty, coiled himself at my feet, and went to sleep. I was too anxious to do the same, though I leaned back against the logs to rest my weary frame. It must be remembered that, since the steamer went down, the only rest I had enjoyed was while sitting over the fire with Marcus. I had had a fatiguing swim, a run from an alligator, a climb up a tree, to the branches of which I had had to hang on for some hours, a desperate struggle for life, a long paddle, a second fierce conflict, and another paddle, not to speak of the anxiety to which I had all the time been subject. I had not rested long, when Ready started up and uttered a warning bark, and I saw a couple of men lazily sauntering down from the huts towards the quay, and rubbing their eyes as if just awoke out of sleep.
“Well, and where do you come from, stranger?” was the very natural question they put to me, and which I willingly answered by telling them of the loss of the Mighty Go-ahead, and of most, if not all, of her crew and passengers.
“Then that’s the shouts we heard last night,” observed one of the men to the other.
The men, I found, were overseers of some gangs of negroes, a number of whom soon appeared, some loaded with bales of merchandise, and others with logs of wood. They came stumbling along, laughing and chattering in spite of their burdens. Several, however, relaxing in their efforts, when their taskmasters’ whips descended on their shoulders, howled with pain, but they were very speedily again shouting and talking as merrily as before. The overseers were evidently not satisfied with my account of myself. I looked anxiously up the river for the steamer coming down on her passage to New Orleans, but I found that she was not expected for another hour. I would have tried to obtain some refreshment, but I knew that if I went to the huts I should be subjected to more inquiries, so I told my companion that we would wait till we got on board the steamer for breakfast. While waiting, I gathered from the conversation of the overseers that Marcus’s pursuers had actually touched there on their way up, and had left a full description of him. I felt thankful that no one had been about when he put us on shore. As it was, I could not help fancying that the overseers associated us in some way with him.