The Entailed Hat; Or, Patty Cannon's Times
of sacrifice, which is the only thing better than learning. She pushed
the scow down and under Phoebus with her remaining hand, till it
relieved her of a portion of the weight of his body, and rose up,
half-bearing the bronze-faced sailor's form, and animating her generous
purpose with the honest and happy smile he wore upon his face, even in
the vestibule of the eternal palace. Then, gathering the long meshes of
the iron chain up from its termination at her feet, she threw the longer
portion of it into the scow, so that it no longer became entangled in
the cross-branches and knots below, and she could lift also the iron
ball sufficiently to glide her feet along the tree.
With pain and difficulty, lessened by self-forgetfulness, she pushed the
scow and the body to the foot of the tree, and, feeling around its old
roots for further support, the red-eyed terrapins arose and swam around
her, disturbed in their possessions; but she feared no reptiles any
more, since Death, the mighty crocodile, had eaten the babe that she had
nursed but this morning.
She had intelligent remembrance enough to think of all the precautions
her deliverer had taken, and, when she had dragged his body on the shore
into the dense, scrubby woods, she also drew out the little scow and
heaped some dead brush upon it, and had scarcely concealed herself when
she heard voices from the river, and the report of a sail swung around
upon its boom, and of feet upon a deck. The voices said:
"If she's got off to Delaware, Joe Johnson won't have long to stay on
his visit; for all the beaks will gather fur him an' be started by John
M. Clayton."
"I'm sorry fur Joe," answered another voice; "he hoped to make one more
big scoop this trip, an' quit the Corners fur good."
"Let us sail by ole Ebenezer Johnson's roost at Broad Creek mouth, an'
peep up both forks of the river," said the other voice, receding; "it's
only a mile and a half. If we discover nothin', we'll run down the river
and inquire at the landings as fur as Vienny."
The colored woman now worked with all her strength to revive the
insensible sailor, rolling him, rubbing his body till her elbows seemed
almost to be dropping off, and then rubbing his great, broad breast with
her head and face and neck. She breathed into his mouth the breath
heaven vouchsafed to Hagar as bountifully as to Sarah, and, wringing out
portions of her garments and hanging them at sunny exposures to dry, she
substituted them, in her exhausted intervals, for the wet clothing of
the man; and as she worked, with a hollow, desolate heart, she sobbed:
"Lord, gi' me this man's life! O Lord, that took my chile, I will have
this life back!"
Crying and weeping, fainting and laboring, the moments, it seemed the
very hours, ran by and still he did not waken; and still, with all that
noble strength that makes the fields of white men grow and blossom under
the negro's unthanked toil, the widow and childless one fought on for
this cold lump of brother nature.
He warmed, he breathed, he groaned, he spoke!
His voice was like a happy sigh, as of one disturbed near the end of a
comforting morning nap in summer:
"You thar, Mary?"
He stared around with difficulty, his wounded face now clotted and
stained with blood, and his eyes next looked an inquiry so kind and
apprehensive that she answered it, to save him breath:
"Baby's drowned. God does best!"
He reached his hand to hers--she was almost naked to the waist, having
sacrificed all she had, the greatest of which was modesty, to bring back
that life in him which came naked and unashamed into the world--and he
put his little strength into the grasp.
"Mary," he exhaled, "why didn't you ketch the baby and leave me go?"
"Oh, dearly as I loved it," the woman answered, "I'm glad you come up
under my hands instead. You can do good: you're a white man. Baby would
have only been a poor slave, or a free negro nobody would care for."
"I mean to do good, if the Lord lets me," sighed the sailor; "I mean to
go and die agin for human natur at Johnson's Cross-roads."
CHAPTER XXIV.
OLD CHIMNEYS.
The day was far advanced when Jimmy Phoebus was strong enough to rise
and walk, and leave the refuge in the woods. He advised the colored
woman to crawl through the pine-trees along the margin, while he paddled
in the old scow in the shadow of the forest, which now lay strong upon
the river's breast.
At the distance of about a mile, Broad Creek, like a tributary river,
flowed into the Nanticoke from the east, fully a quarter of a mile wide,
and half a mile up this stream an old, low, extended, weather-blackened
house faced the river, and seemed to grin out of its broken ribs and
hollow window-sockets like a traitor's skull discolored upon a gibbet.
It was falling to pieces, and along its roof-ridge a line of crows
balanced and croaked, as if they had fine stories to tell and weird
opinions to pass upon the former inhabitants of the tenement.
"There, I have hearn tell," said Jimmy, as he drew in to the bank, and
took the woman into the scow and began to tow her along the beach,
wading in the water, "_there_, I have hearn tell, lived the pirate of
Broad Creek, ole Ebenezer Johnson, who was shot soon after the war of
'12 at Twiford's house down yonder."
"For kidnapping free people?" asked the woman, without interest, the
question coming from her desolate heart.
"In them days they didn't kidnap much; it was jest a-beginnin'. The war
of '12 busted everything on the bay, burned half a dozen towns, kept the
white men layin' out an' watchin', and made loafers of half of 'em, an'
brought bad volunteers an' militia yer to trifle with the porer gals,
an' some of them strangers stuck yer after the war was done. I don't
know whar ole Ebenezer come from; some says this, an' some that. All we
know is, that he an' the Hanlen gals, one of 'em Patty Cannon, was the
head devils in an' after the war."
"It's a bad-lookin' ole house, sir. See, yonder's a coon runnin' out of
the door. Oh! I hear my child cryin' everywhere I look."
"The British begun to run the black people off in the war. The black
people wanted to go to 'em. The British filled the islands in Tangier
yer with nigger camps; they was a goin' to take this whole peninsuly,
an' collect an' drill a nigger army on it to put down Amerikey. When the
war was done, the British sailed away from Chesapeake Bay with thousands
of them colored folks, an' then the people yer begun to hate the free
niggers."
"For lovin' liberty?" the woman sighed, looking at the ball, which had
galled her ankle bloody.
"They hated free niggers as if they was all Tories an' didn't love
Amerikey. So, seein' the free niggers hadn't no friends, these Johnsons
an' Patty Cannon begun to steal 'em, by smoke! There was only a million
niggers in the whole country; Louisiana was a-roarin' for 'em; every
nigger was wuth twenty horses or thirty yokes of oxen, or two good farms
around yer, an' these kidnappers made money like smoke, bought the
lawyers, went into polytics, an' got sech a high hand that they tried a
murderin' of the nigger traders from Georgey an' down thar, comin' yer
full of gold to buy free people. That give 'em a back-set, an' they hung
some of Patty's band--some at Georgetown, some at Cambridge."
"If my baby's made white in heaven, I'm afraid I won't know him," the
woman said, nodding, and wandering in her mind.
"At last the Delawareans marched on Johnson's Cross-roads an' cleaned
his Pangymonum thar out, an' guarded him, and sixteen pore niggers in
chains he'd kidnapped, to Georgetown jail. Young John M. Clayton was
paid by the Phildelfy Quakers to git him convicted. Johnson was strong
in the county--we're in it now, Sussex--an' if Clayton hadn't skeered
the jury almost to death, it would have disagreed. He held 'em over
bilin' hell, an' dipped 'em thar till the court-room was like a
Methodis' revival meetin', with half that jury cryin' 'Save me, save me,
Lord!' while some of 'em had Joe Johnson's money in their pockets. Joe
was licked at the post, banished from the state, an' so skeered that he
laid low awhile, goin' off somewhar--to Missoury, or Floridey, or
Allybamy. But Patty Cannon never flinched; she trained the young boys
around yer to be her sleuth-hounds an' go stealin' for her; an', till
she dies, it's safer to be a chicken than a free nigger. They stole you,
pore creatur' from Phildelfy, an' they steal 'em in Jersey and away into
North Carliney; fur Joe Johnson's a smart feller fur enterprise, and
Patty Cannon's deep as death an' the grave."
Phoebus looked at the woman sitting in the scow, and he saw that she
was fast asleep; his tale having no power to startle her senses, now
worn-out by every infliction.
"I must git that ball an' chain off," the sailor said; "but iron, in
these ole sandy parts, is scarce as gold."
He lifted her out of the scow and laid her in the shade, and began to
explore the old house. To his joy, he found the iron crane still hanging
in the chimney, and signs of recent fire.
"These yer ole cranes was valleyble once," Jimmy said, "an' in the wills
they left 'em to their children like farms, an' lawsuits was had over
the bilin' pots an' the biggest kittles. It broke a woman's heart to git
a little kittle left her, an' the big-kittled gal was jest pestered with
beaux. But, by smoke! we're a-makin' iron now in Amerikey! Kittles is
cheap, and that's why this crane is left by robbers an' gypsies after
they used it."
He twisted the crane out of the bricks on which it was hinged, and some
of the mantel jamb fell down.
"Hallo!" cried Jimmy, "what's this a rollin' yer? A shillin', by George!
I say, by George, this time caze ole George the Third's picter's on it.
Maybe thar's more of 'em."
He pulled a few bricks out of the jamb, and raked the hollow space
inside with his hand, and brought forth a steel purse of English
manufacture, filled with shillings at one end, and fifteen golden
guineas at the other; they rolled out through the decayed filigree,
rusted, probably, by the rain percolating through the chimney, and the
purse crumbled to iron-mould in his hand.
"'The Lord is my shepherd,'" said the sailor, reverently; "'I shall not
want. He leadeth me by the still waters.' How beautiful Ellenory says
it. Look thar at the waters of the Nanticoke, beautiful as silver. Lord,
make 'em pure waters an' free, to every pore creatur!"
"To who! to who!" screamed a voice out of the hollow chimney.
"Well," answered Jimmy, hardly excited, "I ain't partickler. Ha! I
thought I knew you, Barney," he continued, as an owl fluttered out and
hopped up a ruined stairway.
"Now, British money ain't coined by Uncle Sam; what is the date? I can
make figgers out easy: Eighteen hundred and fifteen!' I was about to do
Ebenezer Johnson the onjustice of saying that he'd sold his country out
to ole Admiral Cockburn, but the war was done when this money was
coined. Whose was it?"
He removed more carefully some of the bricks, to put his hand in the
hollow depository left there, and, feeling around and higher up, brought
out the bronze hilt of a sword, on which was a name.
"Who would have thought this was a house of learnin'?" Jimmy said,
dubiously. "I can't read it. By smoke! maybe they've murdered somebody
yer. I reckon he was British. Ellenory kin read it, if I live to see her
agin."
There was nothing more, and, as he left the rotting old house, a crash
and a cloud of smoke rose up behind him, and the chimney fell into the
middle of the floor.
With the crane's sharp wrought-iron point and long leverage the pungy
captain succeeded, after tedious efforts, in breaking the links of the
chain and also in removing the linked cannon-ball from the woman's foot,