CHAPTER XX
THE WILD TURKEY
THE ending to that strange and unsettled life that Jack led at the Roost came as suddenly and as sharply as though the one part of his existence had been severed from the other part by the keen cut of the knife of fate.
Mr. Parker had been away from home for nearly a couple of weeks. He had not taken Jack with him, so that during that time the lad had little or nothing to do excepting such light work about the house as Peggy Pitcher demanded of him.
A great deal of his time he spent in or about Dennis’s cabin, maybe sitting in the great sooty fireplace talking ramblingly to the overseer, while the negro wife pattered about the bare earthen floor in her naked feet, her face always stolid and expressionless as with a sort of savage, almost resentful reserve.
When the master was away from home, Dennis, as has been said, sometimes went off fishing or hunting. He had an old musket hidden away in his cabin, and now and then he would fetch home a raccoon, an opossum, a half-dozen squirrels, or some other such bit of fresh meat from the forest or the clearing. One hot and sultry afternoon during this memorable time of the master’s absence, he and Jack started off to a clearing about a mile away, where of a morning or in the slant of the day a flock of turkey-cocks, banished now from the company of their hens, would gather together to feed in the long, shaggy grass.
Peggy Pitcher was very angry at Jack’s going with Dennis instead of staying at home to attend to his work. She and Jack were very good friends, but there were times when she would become very provoked with him. “I just wish his honor would come home and find you gone,” she said. “I’d just like him to give you a good leathering some fine day. Then maybe you’d learn to stay at home and ‘tend to your own work.”
She was very angry, and Jack burst out laughing at her as he ran away out of the house and into the hot yellow afternoon sunshine.
Dennis, with his musket balanced over his shoulder, was waiting for Jack, and the two struck off together across a shaggy field of last year’s Indian corn, toward a dark belt of pine woods in the distance. There were some half-dozen negroes hoeing in a neighboring field under guard of a half-breed overseer, and they stopped from their work and stood looking as the two passed by. Before they reached the woodland, Little Coffee came running after them. He reached them panting, the sweat running down his black face in bright drops. Dennis did not order him home again, but without seeming to perceive his presence, walked away, straight across the shaggy field, striking into the edge of the clearing that bounded the deeper growth of woods beyond, Jack keeping pace with him on one side and Little Coffee upon the other.
“When I rode over to Marlborough t’other day,” said Jack, “there was a great big turkey came out and crossed over the road just in front of me. I believe I could have knocked it over with a stick or a stone if I’d had one in my hand.”
“Aye,” said Dennis, “there be a many of them through the woods.” He was chewing upon a piece of spice-wood which he had broken off from one of the bushes as he passed by.
“Me see heaps of turkeys lots of times,” said Little Coffee, but neither Jack nor Dennis paid any attention to him.
To Jack the woods presently became an impenetrable maze of trees and undergrowth, but Dennis walked straight on without any hesitation. It was very warm under the still shadows of the pines. Now and then there were patches of underbrush, and now and then they had to stoop low to pass through the thickets; Little Coffee was sometimes obliged to pick his way so carefully through the cat-briers that he was left far behind. At a certain place they came to a morass in the woods which seemed to be the head waters of some creek—a cluster of smooth, glassy pools, surrounded by trees and bushes. Here the ground was soft and spongy under foot, and Dennis picked his way carefully along, Jack following in his footsteps.
“Look at that snake!” cried out Dennis sharply, and Jack started violently at the quick words breaking upon the silence. Dennis made a thrust at the reptile with the butt of his gun, but it slipped quickly into the water and was gone.
“‘Twas a moccasin-snake,” said Dennis.
Jack laughed. “I’m glad I haven’t Little Coffee’s bare legs, anyhow,” he said. Dennis grinned and looked at Little Coffee where he stood with rolling eyes, seeing another snake in every coil of roots.
Jack never forgot these minute particulars of that day’s adventures; that which happened afterward seemed to stamp them indelibly upon his memory.
So, at last, they came out into an open space of some twenty or thirty acres in extent where the trees had been cleared away. Here and there were little patches of bushes, and here and there the tall trunk of a tree, blackened and seared by fire, stood stark and erect. Across, beyond the clearing, was a strip of blue river, the distant further shore hazy in the hot sunlight.
“Is this the place where the turkeys feed?” Jack asked.
“Aye,” said Dennis. “Phew!” he continued, wiping his streaming face with his shirt-sleeve, “it surely be mortal hot this day.”
Jack looked all around the wide spread of clearing. There was not a sign of life in all the vast shimmering expanse, except a few turkey-buzzards sailing smoothly through the air and two or three others perched upon a blackened limb of a tree.
“There’s something dead over yonder,” observed Dennis.
“Where do you find the turkeys, Dennis?” said Jack.
“Find ‘em!” said Dennis. “Why, you find ‘em here. Where else should you find ‘em?” Jack did not ask further questions, and presently Dennis explained: “They won’t come out of the woods till toward the cool of the afternoon, when they come out to feed. Then we’ve got to creep upon ‘em or lay by till they come to us.” As he spoke he wiped his face again with his sleeve.
By and by he began loading his musket, measuring the powder very carefully, wrapping the bullet in a piece of greasy cloth, and ramming it down with some difficulty into the gun.
Jack sat upon a fallen log, watching him, and Little Coffee sat squatted upon his hams, also looking on. After Dennis had loaded his musket, he propped it carefully upon the log and then stretched himself out at length upon a little grassy place under the shade of a tree. “By smoke!” he said, “I wish I had a drink of water.”
Jack had not realized until Dennis spoke how thirsty he himself was. “I wish I had one, too,” he said.
“Well, you can just wish for it,” said Dennis, “and so can I, and that’s the best we can do. You keep a sharp lookout now,” he said, “and the best pair of eyes sees the turkeys first.”
He stretched himself out as he spoke and closed his eyes, as though to sleep.
The sun had sunk further and further toward the west, and the shadows of the trees were growing longer and longer. Jack sat listening and enjoying the warm solitude. How strange and wonderful it all was; how far remote from that old life he had left behind in England. England! his mind went backward feeling around amid the things of the past, and measuring them with the present. That was England—this was America.
“Yan de turkey, Massa Dennis!” Little Coffee whispered, suddenly, and Jack came sharply back to the consciousness of things about him with a sudden keen thrill that was almost painful in its intensity.
Dennis had started up from where he lay and was looking in the direction in which Little Coffee was pointing. Jack raised himself cautiously and also looked in the same direction. His heart was beating very quickly. The turkeys had come out from the woods without any one of the three having seen them until that moment. They were feeding in the open about a furlong away, and maybe fifty or sixty yards from the edge of the woods.
Dennis arose, and, without speaking, took up his gun. Then, partly crouching, he skirted back into the woods and along the edge of the clearing, Jack following him and Little Coffee following Jack. So they went on for some distance, and then Dennis turned sharply out again toward the edge of the woods. He went forward now very slowly and cautiously, and Jack still followed him, half crouching. He was intensely excited, his mouth was dry and clammy, and his pulse beat heavily in his ears. He did not notice the sweat trickling down his face. Would Dennis really shoot one of the turkeys?
“Wait a little,” said Dennis, without turning around, “till I see where I be.”
Jack could now see between the thickets that the clearing was just ahead. Dennis crept cautiously forward and Jack stood watching him. Presently he saw that the other was beckoning for him to come forward. He did so, approaching very carefully. Dennis was crouched down, looking out through the bushes, and Jack came close to him, Little Coffee following. He peered out from between the leaves; there were the turkeys, perhaps fifty or sixty yards away—a half a dozen or more great cock turkeys. To Jack’s eyes they looked very big and very near.
“’Tis like if we went on a little furder,” whispered Dennis, “’twould bring us nigher to them, but I have a mind to risk a shot from here.” He was crouched, gazing at the turkeys. Then he carefully raised the musket and thrust it out through a fork of the bush in front of him. He took a long, steady aim. Jack waited, hardly daring to breathe, every nerve tensely braced to meet the shock of the discharge.
Something must have alarmed the birds, for one great cock suddenly raised his head and looked sharply this way and that, and then they were all standing with their necks stretched high, looking intently about them. Then suddenly there came the stunning, deafening report of the musket. A cloud of pungent smoke hid everything for a little while; then it had dissolved.
Could Jack believe his eyes? One great turkey cock was flapping and struggling upon the ground.
He leaped up with a shout and ran out into the clearing. He heard Little Coffee shout behind him as he ran forward through the long, shaggy grass, jumping over the stumps, and he had a vision of the rest of the turkeys scattering with shrill, piping cries toward the woods—half-flying, half-running—then he was standing over the turkey cock where it lay upon the ground in the tall, brown grass. It was nearly motionless when he reached it, and its half-closed eyes were still bright with the life that was just leaving them. There it lay, and Jack looked down at it in an ecstasy. The sun shone upon the burnished, metallic luster of its neck-feathers—purple, blue, green. Its great horny foot gave a futile, scratching struggle, and then it was quite still.
Dennis was coming hurrying forward at a trot, carrying his musket hanging at his side. Little Coffee was capering around. Dennis came up to where Jack stood. He hid whatever exultation he might have felt under an assumed air of indifference. “‘Twas a pretty long shot,” he said, “and methought I’d miss it. But ’twas the only chance I had.”
As he spoke he wiped his face with his sleeve. He picked up the bird and held it out at arm’s length. Its wings fell open as he did so. Then he dropped it again heavily upon the ground. “Well,” he said, “there’s fresh meat for Nama, anyhow.”
“I’ll carry it home for you, Dennis,” said Jack.
“You may if you choose,” said Dennis.
The shadows were growing longer and longer as they plunged into the woods again with their faces turned homeward. Jack soon found his load was very heavy, and presently he was glad to share it with Little Coffee. He tied the feet of the great bird together with one of his shoe-strings; then he slung it over a branch, he taking one end upon his shoulder and Little Coffee the other. Then again they went onward, Dennis leading the way.
“HE PICKED UP THE BIRD AND HELD IT OUT AT ARM’S LENGTH.”
The sun had set and the first shade of twilight was beginning to fall when they came out again from the woods and in sight of the Roost. As they came up to the row of cabins Kala came out to meet them. “De master he came home while ago,” he said. “He be axing for you.”
Jack stood stock-still. “What’s that, Kala?” said he.
“De master he came home,” repeated Kala. “He been axing for you.”
Somehow Jack could not believe what he heard. “D’ye mean Mr. Parker’s come back?” he said.
“Hum-hum,” said Kala, nodding his head.
CHAPTER XXI
THE STRUGGLE
JACK and Little Coffee had laid the dead turkey down upon the ground. Without another word he ran away toward the house. He heard voices as he approached; they ceased at the sound of his footsteps as he entered the house. He found Mr. Parker standing in the middle of the hall with his hat upon his head; Peggy Pitcher stood leaning over the lean, rickety banister-rail, half-way up the stairs. “There he is now,” she said as Jack entered. “And ’tis no use to bluster and swear at me any more. I told you ’twas none of my doings that he went.”
Jack had never before seen Mr. Parker in one of his humors. He had heard others about the Roost speak of those times when the master would be in one of his fits of temper, but he himself had as yet never beheld one of those dreadful moods. Now he saw that the master’s eyes were bloodshot. Mr. Parker had not been drinking, but his face was congested to a purple-red, and the veins in his neck and forehead stood out full and round. He turned a dull, heavy, truculent look upon Jack as he came in, and Jack, under that heavy and forbidding glare, stood still and looked down upon the floor.
“Come hither,” said Mr. Parker at last, in a gloomy voice, and at his bidding Jack advanced slowly and reluctantly. “Come hither, I say,” he repeated, as Jack hesitated at a little distance, and again Jack advanced. When he had come near enough Mr. Parker reached out and caught him by the collar of his coat. Jack made no effort to resist him; he stood perfectly quiet, his soul heavy with a dumb apprehension as to what was about to happen to him.
“Mrs. Pitcher hath told me that she bade you not to go away from home,” said Mr. Parker; “but that in spite of all she could say you did go, leaving your work undone behind you. Well, then, I’ll lay my mark on you, by——, and in such a way that you’ll not forget it soon, nor run away again when you’re told to stay at home.”
He drew Jack across the room as he spoke, and Jack, fearing to resist, yielded himself to be led as the master chose. It was not until Mr. Parker had taken down the heavy riding-whip from the wall that he fully understood what his master intended to do to him. His first instinct was of defense, and as Mr. Parker raised his arm he too reached up, hardly knowing what he did, and caught the other by the sleeve, holding it tightly. “Your honor!” he cried, and he recognized that his voice was hoarse and dry—“your honor, I’m mightily sorry for what I’ve done, and I promise you I’ll never do the like again. I’ll never run away again, your honor, indeed I won’t! Pray don’t strike me, your honor!”
“Let go my arm!” cried Mr. Parker, harshly. “What d’ye mean by holding my sleeve like that?” He strove to break away from Jack’s hold, but Jack clung to him more closely than ever.
“I promise you,” he cried panting, “I promise you—I’ll never go away again. I promise you after this I’ll do just as you would have me, but—but—don’t beat me. I’m mightily sorry for what I’ve done—I am—but don’t try to beat me!”
“Let go my arm, I tell you!” cried Mr. Parker, and he tried to wrench himself loose. But still Jack held him tightly. Then Jack felt that Mr. Parker had let go his grasp upon his collar and was trying to pluck away the hold of the fingers that clutched the sleeve. “Let me go, I tell you!” he cried out again. “Are you mad to handle me thus?—What do you mean?—Are you mad?—Let me go!” The next moment he had torn his arm free. He struck at Jack with the whip, but Jack clung to him so closely that the blow was without effect, and before he could strike him again Jack had caught him once more.
He heard the rasping sound of ripping cloth, and he knew that he must have torn some part of his master’s dress. “You sha’n’t beat me!” he gasped. “You sha’n’t beat me!” Mr. Parker tried to thrust him away with his elbow, but he clung all the more tightly. As Mr. Parker pushed him partly away, he could see the other’s handsome face flaming purple-red, but in the violence and excitement of the struggle he only half knew what he was doing. He could feel the struggling movements of his master’s body as he clutched him, and he was conscious of the soft linen of his shirt and the fine smell of his person. Then he felt that some one had caught him by the collar, and, in the turmoil of his excitement, he knew that it was Mrs. Pitcher who held him, and he heard her voice crying in his ear: “Let go, Jack! Are you clean gone crazy? What are you doing? Let go, I say.”
“No, I won’t!” cried Jack, hoarsely, “he sha’n’t beat me!” He hardly knew what he was doing; his only instinct was of self-defense. In his struggles he felt himself strike against the edge of the table, and then against a chair. Then he stumbled against another chair, overturning it with a loud clatter. At the same instant, Mr. Parker tripped over it and fell, rolling over and over on the floor. In the fall his hat and wig were knocked off, but he still held the whip clutched in his hand. Jack stood panting, and Peggy Pitcher still had hold of him by the collar of his coat. In the sudden cessation of the tumult of the struggle, Jack could hear the blood surging with a ceaselessly beating “hum-hum-hum” in his ears.
Mr. Parker lay still for a second or two as though partly stunned by his fall, then he scrambled up from the floor. He picked up his wig and put it on his head. He did not seem to see his hat where it had fallen under the table. He put his hand to his head and stood so for a second or two. Then he flung the riding-whip down upon the table and walked to the door without looking at Jack. Dennis, who was on his way to his cabin, had heard the sound of the struggle and loud voices, the scuffling of feet upon the bare floor, the clattering overturning of the chair. He had stopped, and now stood with the musket over his shoulder, Little Coffee carrying the turkey. He was still so standing when Mr. Parker came to the door. “Dennis!” cried the master hoarsely, “bring three or four men and come over here directly.” Then, without waiting for a reply, he came back to the table and poured out a glass of rum for himself, the bottle clinking and tinkling against the edge of the glass with the nervous trembling of his hand.
Jack heard Mr. Parker’s words to Dennis, and then he realized for the first time how utterly and helplessly powerless he was, and into what a pit of trouble he had fallen. His heart sank away within him and he stood without moving, numb with despair, the rapid pulse-beats still thumping and surging in his ears. “Your honor—your honor,” he said huskily, “I—I didn’t know what I was doing—I didn’t. I didn’t mean to tear your dress. Pardon me, your honor, I didn’t mean it!” He almost choked, swallowing upon a hard lump in his throat. Mr. Parker paid not the slightest attention to him. “Won’t you listen to me, your honor?” he cried despairingly. He heard the approaching footsteps of Dennis and those whom he had brought with him, and the sound lent a still heavier agony of despair to his apprehension. “I didn’t mean to do it, your honor,” he cried, with a final effort to placate that implacable one, and then the next moment Dennis and three negroes came into the house.
“I want you to take that boy,” said Mr. Parker, pointing to Jack, “and lock him up in the cellar for the night. I’ll flay you alive to-morrow,” said he, turning with a flash upon Jack and grinding his white teeth together. “I’ll spare you for to-night, but to-morrow I’ll murder you, I will,” and then he turned and went out of the room.
“What have you been doing, Jack?” said Dennis.
“Oh! I don’t know, Dennis,” Jack panted—almost sobbing. “He was going to beat me and I tried to keep him from doing it, that was all.”
“He fought with his honor like a wild-cat,” said Mrs. Pitcher, “and he threw him down over a chair onto the floor.”
“Why did you do that, Jack?” said Dennis. “You must have been clean gone crazy to do such a thing as that.” Jack tried to reply, but he could not do so for the choking in his throat. “Well,” said Dennis, “there is nothing left now but to do as his honor said. You had better come along now, and not make any more trouble.”
“Oh, I’m not going to make any more trouble,” said Jack, hoarsely.
Dennis and Mrs. Pitcher stood looking at him. “Well,” said Dennis, as though giving himself a shake, “’tis a bad, bad piece of business. I can’t do anything to help you. Come along, and I’ll make it as easy for you as I can.”
“I’ll send you down something good to eat,” said Mrs. Pitcher.
“I don’t want anything to eat,” said Jack, despairingly.
The cellar was a vault-like dungeon of a place, built solidly of brick, with only a narrow, barred window and the door from the kitchen opening into it. Indeed, it had once been used as a place of confinement or retention for the slaves in olden days, and there was a pair of rusty unused shackles with chains yet hanging from a staple in the wall. Jack could not tell how long it was he sat there, in the cold dampness of the place, thinking and thinking, and yet with a mind inert and dull as to any precision of consciousness. He could hear distant sounds through the house, and now and then the echo of footsteps passing overhead. All around him was a dead and muffled silence of darkness. It must have been nightfall when Mrs. Pitcher came, bringing some food wrapped up in a napkin. “Here,” she said, “you eat this, and you’ll feel the better for it.” Jack shook his head. “Well, I’ll put it down here, and maybe you’ll eat it after a while.” And then she went away, leaving him once more to the darkness and the silence.
By little and little the sounds of moving in the house above were stilled. Jack’s ears hummed and tingled and buzzed, and he sat there thinking, thinking, thinking, and yet not thinking with any set purpose of thought. What was to happen to him? Oh! if he had not resisted his master! Why had he resisted? If there were only some way in which he could set himself right with that master! If he could only beg and obtain some pardon! And then he realized with despair that there was no way in which he could undo what he had done; that there was no possible pardon for him. He saw as in a mental picture his master rolling over on the floor, and he knew that he would never be forgiven such an insult. Now and then he thrilled almost as with an agony—if he could only escape the inevitable to-morrow! But, no! There was nothing for him to do but to sit there all night waiting for the day. Oh! if he could only stop thinking about it. He might have sat there thinking thus for an hour; he might have sat there ten hours; there was no sequence of thought by which he might measure the length or the shortness of time—nothing but a level stretch of dull and numb despair. Then, suddenly, he felt that he was parched and dry with thirst. He wondered if Peggy Pitcher had brought him anything to drink. He reached over, fumbling in the darkness, and opened the cloth in which was wrapped the food she had brought him. There was a bottle with something in it. It was rum and water, and Jack, as he drank a long draught of it, felt an almost animal gratitude in the quenching of his parching thirst. Presently he began eating some of the food, and before he knew it he had made a hearty meal.
For a while the eating distracted his mind, and his troubles lay big and dumb, brooding within him; but after he had finished the food and sat again in the humming silence, it all came back to him with a renewed and overwhelming keenness. He bowed his head over on his knees. Recollections of the warm, bright day that had just passed—a recollection of the dead turkey as it lay in the grass—came vividly to him. The trivial recollection seemed to make the terror of that which afterward happened all the more tragic by contrast. He felt the hot drops well bigger and bigger under his burning eyelids, and then one fell upon his hand and trickled slowly down across it.
CHAPTER XXII
THE ESCAPE
IT had not seemed to Jack that he had been asleep, but vision-like recollections of the happenings of the day skimmed ceaselessly in a panorama-like vision through his tired brain. Now he saw the hot stretch of clearing as he had seen it that afternoon—the quivering, pulsing air, the slanting sun, the distant river, the blue further shore. Again and again he thought he struggled with his master. Sometimes he dreamed that the next day had come, and that his master had forgiven him. But through all these vision-like dreams there ever loomed, big and terrible in the background of his half-consciousness, the unknown fate that awaited him in the morning, and he would awaken to find those dreams dissolve into a black and terrible reality in which there was no spark of hope.
Suddenly he was startled from one of these half-waking visions by the sound of footsteps passing overhead, and then by the noise of a key rattling furtively in the lock. It sounded loud in the death-like silence. Then the door at the head of the cellar-steps opened, and the yellow light of a candle slid slanting down along the wall. Jack looked with straining eyes, and then he saw that it was Peggy Pitcher who was coming. She was in her stocking feet, and wore a loose wrapper and a mob-cap tied under her chin. “Why, Mrs. Pitcher,” whispered Jack, tremulously, “is that you?”
“Yes,” she said, “’tis I, but you be quiet.”
“What time of night is it?” Jack whispered.
“Why, ’tis early yet—not more than nine o’clock, I reckon.”
“Is that all?” said Jack.
She did not reply, but set the candle down upon the floor and stood for a while regarding Jack, her arms akimbo. “Well,” she said at last, speaking angrily, “’tis all your own fault that you’re here, and ’tis none of my business. I told you not to go away from home with Dennis, but you did go in spite of all, and now you see what’s come of it. By rights I should let you alone; but no, here I be,” and she tossed her head. “Well,” she continued, “I’m not going to stand by and see you beat to death, and that’s all there be of it.”
Jack’s very heartstrings quivered at her latter words. “What do you mean, Mrs. Pitcher?” he said, hoping dumbly that he had somehow misunderstood.
“Why,” said she, “I mean that his honor’s in that state of mind I wouldn’t trust him not to have you whipped to pieces out of pure deviltry. I never saw him as mad as this before, and I don’t know what’s got into him. He’s been away from home somewhere, and something’s gone wrong, and the very black evil’s got into him. I’ve been talking to him ever since he sent you here, but he won’t listen to anything. I’ve seen him in bad humors, but I never saw him in as black a humor as he’s in to-night. If he sets on you to-morrow he’ll never stop till he finishes you, and that I do believe.”
Jack could not speak. He sat looking at her in the light of the candle.
“Well,” Mrs. Pitcher burst out at last, “I’ve thought it all over and I’ve made up my mind. I dare say I’m a fool for my pains, but I’m going to let you get away. For the long and short of it is that I sha’n’t stay by and see ye beat to pieces like he beat one of the blackies last summer. After Dennis had locked you up, his honor must needs send for him and ask where you was, and if you was safe; and then he must needs have the key of the cellar in his own pockets. He was dead tired, and so went to bed a while ago, and I’ve just contrived to steal the keys out of his pockets. Now I’m going to let you go, I am.”
“Oh, Peggy!” cried Jack, hoarsely. His mouth twitched and writhed, and it was all he could do to keep from breaking down. “But how about you?” he said, wiping his hand across his eyes.
“Never you mind about me,” said Mrs. Pitcher, angrily. “You mind your own business, and I’ll mind my business. I ain’t going to see you whipped to death—that’s all there is about it. So you just mind your business and I’ll mind mine.”
“But where shall I go after you let me out, Mrs. Pitcher?”
“Why,” said she, “that you’ll have to settle for yourself. ’Tis as much as I can do to let you go. All I know is, you must get away from here. Now go, and don’t you lag about any longer. If his honor should chance to wake and find his keys gone, and suspicioned you’d got away, ’twould be a worse lookout for you than ever, not to speak of myself.”
Then Jack realized that he was free to escape. “I’ll—I’ll never forget what you’ve done for me,” said he in a choking voice, “as long as ever I live.”
“There, you go now,” she said, and she pushed him roughly toward the cellar stairway. “As for me, don’t you think anything about me, Jack; I’ll do well enough for a poor wicked creature, and even if his honor does find out that ’twas I let you go, why, he won’t murder me. But then he won’t find out,” she added. “So, now you go.”
“Good-by, Mrs. Pitcher,” said Jack; “won’t you say good-by?”
“No, I won’t,” said she. “You go, and don’t you lose any more time about it.”
But it was not until he was fairly out into the starlit night that he realized that he had really escaped. He ran some little distance away before he stopped. Then he stood looking about him. Where was he to go now? Where was he to escape to? He stood still thinking. He wondered if Dennis would help him. Then without any especial object he crept around back of the group of huts. He could see that there was a faint light in Dennis’s cabin, but he was afraid to approach closer. Some one was singing in the darkness beyond, and he knew that it was Little Coffee chanting in his high-pitched voice. He crept slowly and cautiously toward the sound of the singing, and presently he could distinguish the outline of Little Coffee’s form against the sky. He was sitting perched upon the fence. “Coffee!” whispered Jack, “Little Coffee!” But Little Coffee did not hear him and continued his barbaric chant, which seemed to consist chiefly of a repetition of the words, “White man came to de green tree, black man, he go ‘way.” “Little Coffee!” whispered Jack again, and then instantly the singing ceased.
There was a moment or two of listening silence. “Who da?” said Little Coffee presently, and Jack could see that he had turned his face toward him in the darkness.
“Hush!” whispered Jack, “’tis I, Jack.”
“Who?—Jack?—Dat you, boy?” said Little Coffee.
“Yes,” answered Jack.
Little Coffee jumped down instantly from the fence and came in the darkness toward Jack’s voice. “How you git away?” said he to Jack, “dey say Massa Dennis lock you up in de cellar. How you git out, boy?”
“Never mind that,” said Jack; “’tis enough that I got out, and here I am. Come out here, Coffee, away from the cabins; somebody’ll hear us.”
He led the way down toward the edge of the bluff, and Little Coffee followed him for a while in an amazed silence. “What you go do now, boy?” he asked after a little while.
Jack did not answer immediately. “I’m going to run away,” he said at last.
“You no run away,” said Little Coffee, incredulously. Jack did not reply. “How you going to run away, anyhow?” asked Little Coffee.
“I am going to go off in the boat,” said Jack.
“You no run away, boy,” said Little Coffee again.
“Yes, I will, too,” said Jack; and then he added, almost despairingly, “I’ve got to run away, Little Coffee. I wonder if the oars are down by the dug-out?”
“Yes, ‘im be,” said Little Coffee; “I see Kala prop de oars up ag’in’ de bank when he come in from de pot-nets! Where you run away to, anyhow?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” said Jack; and then, as the thought came to him, he said: “First of all, I’m going over the river to Bullock’s Landing. I don’t know where I’ll go then—most likely down to North Carolina. That’s where all the runaways go. I’ll try to get to England from there.”
Little Coffee looked at him in the darkness for a while. “I be no more ‘fraid to run away dan you be ‘fraid to run away,” said he at last.
“Wouldn’t you be afraid?” Jack cried out eagerly; “then you shall go along with me if you choose.” He grasped at the chance of a companion in his escape; for now, that every step brought him more nearly face to face with what he had to do, he began to see what a thing it was to undertake. It seemed to him that if he had someone with him it would make it easier for him.
The two stood looking out across the water. From the edge of the bluff bank where they stood the water stretched away, vast and mysterious, into the distance. The rude dug-out canoe in which Kala had rowed over to the nets was lying drawn up on the shore. Jack could see its shapeless form below in the darkness. He descended the steps to the beach, followed by Little Coffee. The oars still stood leaning against the bank where Kala had left them. Jack gathered them up and carried them down to the dug-out. Some water had leaked through the cracks into the boat, and before he pushed it off he baled it out with the gourd dipper. Little Coffee stood looking silently at the preparations he was making. “You going to run away for sure, boy?” he said at last.
“Why, don’t you see I am?” said Jack.
“Den you berry foolish,” said Little Coffee. “I no run away with you, boy.”
“What’s that?” said Jack, standing up abruptly and facing Little Coffee. “What’s that? Why, you just now said you’d run away with me if I went.”
“I no say dat,” said Little Coffee, “I say maybe I run away.” And then he burst out indignantly, “Guess you tink me fool, boy!”
“And so you’d let me go alone, would you?” said Jack bitterly. Little Coffee made no reply. “Well, then, help me push the boat off, anyhow,” Jack said.
Little Coffee sprang eagerly enough to lend him a hand, and as the two pushed the clumsy boat off into the water, Jack stepped into it. He placed the oars carefully in the rowlocks, and then spat upon his hands. All around him was the night and the water. The bluff bank loomed big against the sky. He could see Coffee’s dim form standing upon the shore, but still he sat resting without pulling the boat off. “Won’t you go with me, Little Coffee?” he said, making a last appeal.
“Um!—um!” Little Coffee grunted in negative.
The water lapped and gurgled against the side of the boat, and the current drifted it slowly around against the shore. Jack still hesitated and lingered. For one moment of failing courage he told himself that he would go back and face what he would have to face the next day, and then, with a rush of despair, he recognized how impossible it would be to face it. “I believe you be ‘fraid to run ‘way, after all,” said Little Coffee from where he stood.
The jar of the words roused Jack to action. “Good-by, Little Coffee,” said he hoarsely, and then he dipped the oars into the water and pulled off from the shore into the night.
CHAPTER XXIII
A MEETING
BULLOCK’S LANDING, the settlement of which Jack had spoken, was a little cluster of poor frame houses on the other side of the wide river from the Roost. You could see it easily enough from the high bluff bank, but not what sort or condition of houses they were. But there were people living there, for now and then boats stopped at the little straggling landing. Jack’s first plan was to cross the river to this place. From there he thought he might be able to find some road through the woods to North Carolina. Or if he were not pursued he might find a chance to work a passage down to Norfolk, and thence, perhaps, to England. Anyhow, the first thing was to get away from the Roost, and Bullock’s Landing was the nearest habitable place. He remembered now that a sloop had been lying there for two days. If it had not left, maybe he could work a passage in it down to Norfolk.
He rowed steadily away into the river, and in a little while the shore he had left behind him disappeared into the darkness of night. All around him was the lapping, splashing water of the river. He guided his course by the stars, still pulling away steadily. His mind drifted aimlessly as he rowed, touching a dozen different points of thought that had nothing to do with his present trouble. Now and then he wondered what he would do when he reached the further shore; but generally he let his thoughts drift as they chose. He planned indefinitely to himself that, when he got to the further shore, where, no doubt, he would find somebody awake, he would, in the morning, go aboard of the sloop and ask the master or captain to let him work his passage to Norfolk. Or, if the captain of the sloop should seem to show any signs of dealing dishonestly with him, and if there appeared to be any danger of his being kidnapped again, he would try to get away into the interior of the country. He could very easily beg his way from house to house until he reached North Carolina. There was a splash in the water, very loud in the stillness—it sounded like a fish. It startled Jack for a moment, and he lay on his oars, listening breathlessly. Presently he began rowing again. He did not doubt that he could easily escape, if need be, into North Carolina. Plenty of people had escaped thus from the plantations, and he was sure he could do the same.
So his scattered thoughts drifted as he continued rowing with almost instinctive regularity. Every now and then he stopped to rest himself for a little while, and then the breathless silence would brood over him, broken only by the ceaseless lap and gurgle and splash of the water all around him.
It was an hour or more before he came to the further shore of the river. At the point which he reached there was nothing to be seen but the black pine forest coming down close to the water’s edge, and two stunted cypress trees that stood out in the stream. In the darkness of the night he could not tell whether the settlement to which he was directing his course lay above or below the point he had reached. The woods brooded dark and still. Millions of fireflies spangled its blackness with quick pulsing sparkles of light, and a multitudinous whisper and murmur of woodland life breathed out from the dark, mysterious depths. He unshipped his oars, rattling loudly in the dark stillness, and stood up in the boat, looking first up the stream and then down, then up again. He thought he saw a dim outline that looked like a group of houses and the sloop far away up the river, and then he sat down, replaced the oars, and began rowing up the shore.
It was the sloop he had seen. Gradually it came out more and more defined from the obscurity. Then he could see the outline of the long, narrow landing. There were signs of life about the sloop, and up on the shore. The door of one of the houses stood open, and there was a light within. By and by he could hear the noise of laughing and singing and of boisterous voices coming from it. As he came nearer and nearer to the landing some one suddenly hailed him through the night. “Ahoy! Who’s that? Who be ye?” He did not reply, but rowed up under the wharf and lashed the dug-out to one of the piles. Three or four men came over across the wharf from the sloop, one of them carrying a lantern. They stood looking down at him as he made the boat fast. Then he climbed up to the wharf. The man with the lantern thrust it close to his face, and almost instantly a voice, very familiar to his ears, called out: “Why, Jack, is that you? What are you doing here?”
Jack looked up and, in the dim light of the lantern, saw who it was. It was Christian Dred. “Why, Dred,” he cried out, “is that you? What are you doing here?”
“That’s what I axed you,” said Dred. “What be you doing here at this time of night.”
“I’ll tell you,” said Jack. “I’ve been treated badly, and I’m running away from my master, Dred. He used me mightily ill, and I had either to run away or to be whipped to-morrow. But, O Dred, I’m glad to find you here, for I didn’t know what I was to do without a friend to help me.” For suddenly the joy and relief of having thus unexpectedly found his friend began to grow so big in Jack’s soul that he could hardly save himself from breaking down before them all. Every instant the wonder of it grew bigger and bigger within him—the wonder that he should so have met Dred face to face in the boundless spaces of the new world—thus at midnight in the wild depths of the Virginias. Then he heard Dred asking, “Who was your master?”
“My master?—His name was Richard Parker,” Jack answered.
“But, O Dred; how is it you were to be here? ’Tis the wonderfullest thing I ever heard tell of.”
Dred burst out laughing, “I’ll tell ye that by and by,” he said. A little crowd had gathered about him by this time, and more were coming over from the sloop, aboard of which there seemed to be a great many men. They crowded closely about, listening curiously to what was said. “But Richard Parker!” said Dred. “Was then Mr. Richard Parker your master? Why, he was here this very arternoon. He and the captain are great friends. Why, the captain came up here just to see Mr. Richard Parker, and that’s why I be here, too.”
Jack, as he looked about him at the faces dim in the lantern-light, wondered dumbly who the captain was, but he was too bewildered and confused to think with any sharpness or keenness of intelligence.
“What are you going to do now?” asked Dred.
“I don’t know,” said Jack. “I thought maybe I might work a passage to Norfolk in this sloop, for I’d seen it yesterday from t’other side of the river and remembered it when I ran away. If I couldn’t do that I was going to try to get down into North Carolina, afoot. What is this sloop, Dred?”
Dred took Jack by the arm. “Never mind that, now,” he said, “you come along with me. I’ll be back again in a trifle or so, Miller,” he said to the man who carried the lantern. Then he pushed his way through the group that had surrounded them, and led Jack along the landing toward the shore. Suddenly as they walked along together he spoke. “Look ‘ee,” he said, “did you ever hear of Blackbeard the Pirate?”
“Yes,” said Jack, “I have, and that not a few times.”
“Well, then,” said Dred, “I’m going to take you to him now. He’s the captain, and if ye wants to get away from your master, the only thing I can do for to help you is to get the captain to take ye along of us. Arter you left the Arundel I disarted and ran away to North Caroliny ag’in, and so here I be now. You’ll have to join with us if you want to get away, and that’s all I can do for you. Will you do that?”
“Indeed I will,” cried Jack. “I’m glad enough to get away to be willing to go anywhere. And then, do you see, you’ll be along, Dred.”
Dred was still holding him by the arm, and he gave it a squeeze. “Well then, we’ll just go up to Bullock’s and have a talk with the captain about it,” he said.
They had left the landing by now and were ascending a little rise of ground to the house, the door of which stood open, and from which was coming the sound of loud voices, and now and then a burst of laughter. Dred, still holding Jack by the arm, led him up to the door of the house and into it. It seemed to be a sort of store, or drinking-house—a wide, barrack, shed-like place. There was a kind of bench or counter, some shelves seemingly empty, and two or three barrels, apparently of spirits. It was reeking hot, and full of men who were drinking and talking with loud voices. Some of the men had the appearance of being planters or settlers; others looked like sailors.
Dred, still holding Jack by the arm, looked around for a brief moment, then he elbowed his way through the crowd toward the other end of the room, almost dragging Jack with him. “Who have you got there, Dred?”—“Who’s that, Dred?” was asked by a dozen voices as Dred pushed his way up the length of the room. Dred did not reply; he led Jack up to a man who sat upon a barrel, swinging one leg and holding a glass of spirits in the hand that rested upon his knee.
Jack knew the man as soon as he saw him. It was the stranger who had twice come to the Roost. He was still dressed in the sort of sailor dress in which Jack had last seen him, and his beard was plaited into three plaits that hung down and over his breast. Jack saw that he had been drinking, perhaps a great deal. He did not move, except to raise his eyes sullenly as Dred led Jack up to him. “Captain,” said Dred, “this young man’s just come ashore down at the wharf. I know him very well, seeing as how he came over from England with me and that we was, so to say, messmates. He’s run away from his master, and says he’d like to ‘list with us. He’s a good, able-bodied lad, and very willing too.”
“Don’t you come from Mr. Parker’s?” said the captain, in his hoarse, husky voice.
“Yes, I do,” said Jack. “He was going to have me whipped, and I ran away from him.”
“I thought I knew your face,” said the pirate. “And so you’re running away, are you? And he was going to beat you, was he? Well, I dare say you deserved it. What were you doing to have him beat you?”
The strange, shaggy crowd pressed up close around them, and Jack gazed about him at the half-drunken faces. “I was doing naught to be whipped for,” he said. “I went away with the overseer, and while I was gone Mr. Parker came back. He tried to whip me with a riding-whip, and while I was keeping him off he fell down. He was going to have me beaten for that to-morrow, and so I ran away.”
The pirate captain stared at him for a little while of gloomy silence, shaking his head slowly from side to side the while. “Well, then,” he said, “Mr. Parker and I are very good friends, and I don’t choose to help his servants to run away from him. So I’ll just make across to his place to-morrow, and drop you on our way up the river.”
Jack saw that the pirate was not sober, and he turned to look to Dred. Dred had let go his hold upon Jack’s arm; now he leaned over toward the pirate captain, and began whispering in his ear, the other listening gloomily and sullenly, and Jack watching them both with an anxious intentness. “Well, I can’t help that,” the pirate said aloud to something that Dred urged; and he raised his elbow and tried to push the other away. Dred leaned forward to whisper some last words as the other thrust him off. “I wish you wouldn’t come here troubling me this way, Chris Dred,” he said. “I don’t care anything about the fellow, he won’t be any use to me. Well, then, take him aboard if you choose, and I’ll think about it to-morrow morning. Now you go back to the sloop. You shouldn’t ha’ left it, as ’tis.”
Again Dred took Jack by the arm. “Come along, Jack,” he said, “’tis all right now.”
“But he said he was going to send me back,” said Jack, as they made their way back through the room, and toward the open air.
“Oh, that’s all very well; he won’t send you back; you just set your mind at rest on that. I know him as well as I know my own hand. He’s give in so far now, he won’t send you back.” Then, as they came out of doors once more—“Lord!” drawing a deep breath, “but it do feel good to get a breath of fresh air.”
“Tell me,” said Jack, as they walked down to the wharf together, “was that Blackbeard?”
“HE LED JACK UP TO THE MAN WHO SAT UPON A BARREL.”
“Ay,” said Dred, “that’s what they call him hereabouts.”
“Why, then,” said Jack, “I’ve seen him before. He was over to the Roost twice in the last two weeks, but I never thought ’twas Blackbeard.”
When, after a deep and profound sleep, Jack awoke almost at the dawn of the following day, he looked about him, at first not knowing just where he was. The hold of the sloop was full of the forms of sleeping men huddled into groups and clusters. The air was heavy and oppressive. He sat for a while staring about him, then suddenly he remembered everything—his surroundings, and how he had fallen asleep there the night before. He roused himself and, stepping cautiously over the sleeping forms without disturbing them, climbed up the ladder to the deck above.
A thick fog had arisen during the night, and everything was shrouded in an impenetrable mist that drifted in great clouds across the deck. The ropes and sheets were wet and fuzzy with the moisture that had settled upon them, and the sails looked heavy and sodden with dampness, the decks and the two boats hanging from the davits wet and shining with moisture. Two or three of the crew were upon watch in the early morning. One of them, his hair and woolen cap white with particles of the drifting mist, lay stretched upon the top of the galley deck-house, a carbine lying beside him. He was smoking his pipe, a faint, blue thread of smoke rising into the mist-laden air. He raised himself upon his elbow and stared at Jack as he came up on deck. The cook, who was also awake, was busy in the galley, and every now and then the clatter of pans sounded loud in the damp silence. A cloud of smoke from the newly-lighted galley fire rolled in great volume out of the stovepipe and drifted slowly across the deck and through the ratlines. In the brightening light Jack could see more of his surroundings. There was a large cannon in the bow of the sloop, partly covered with a tarpaulin, and there were two carronades amidships. The sloop still lay lashed to the end of the wharf. The shore was hidden in the fog, which opened now and then, just showing a dim, fleeting, misty outline which, the next moment, would be again lost in the drifting cloud.
A figure, dim and white in the distance, stood looking over the stern down into the water. It was very familiar to Jack, and then presently it turned toward him and he saw it was Christian Dred. As soon as Dred saw Jack he came directly forward to where he was. “Well,” he said, catching him by the arm and shaking it, “here we be together again, hey?”
Jack laughed, and then he asked, “Are you sure he—Captain Teach—won’t send me back to Mr. Parker again?”
“Why, no,” said Dred, “in course he won’t. That was only his talk last night while he was in his drink. He don’t care nothing for Mr. Parker, and he won’t bother to send you back again. Just you rest your mind easy on that, Jack. If I’d thought there was any chance of his sending you back there, I wouldn’t ‘a’ kept you aboard here, last night, and you may be sure of that. But ’tis mightily queer, Jack, to think that Mr. Parker was only with us yesterday art’noon, and here you comes and finds your way aboard in the night. What did you come over here for, anyhow?”
As Jack stood, giving Dred a brief account of his adventures and of his plans of escape, the signs of awakening life began gradually to show aboard the sloop. The men were coming up from below, and after a while the captain himself came up on deck, from the cabin aft. He stood for a while, his head just showing above the companion-way, looking about him with eyes heavy and bleared with sleep. Then he came slowly up on deck. He beckoned to one of the men—a negro—who ran in his bare feet and hauled up a pail of water from alongside. Jack, from a distance, watched the pirate captain as he washed his face in the water, puffing and splashing and spluttering, rubbing it into his shaggy hair. Then he fished out a yellow and greasy comb from his pocket, and, with a great deal of care, parted his hair in the middle and smoothed it down on either side. Then he began plaiting the two locks at his temples, looking about him all the while with his heavy lowering gaze. Presently his eyes fell upon Jack. “Come here,” he said, without stopping his toilet, and Jack came forward and stood before him. “What’s your name?” he asked. He had finished plaiting the first long, thin lock, and was winding a bit of string around it.
“Jack Ballister.”
“You waited on Mr. Dick Parker, didn’t you?”
“Yes, sir,” said Jack.
“Well, d’ye think you could wait on a gentlewoman?”
“I don’t know,” said Jack; “I believe I could.”
“Well, I expect a lady aboard here, maybe to-night, and it may be I’ll call on you to wait upon her now and then. D’ye think ye could?”
“I believe I could,” said Jack.
“Very well, that will do now. You can go.”
The sound of hissing and sizzling was coming from the galley, and as Jack went forward again, the air was full of the smell of cooking pork.
During the early part of the morning a rude cart drawn by two oxen came out along the wharf. It was driven by a negro, and two men with carbines over their shoulders marched beside it. There were two barrels full of fresh water in the cart, and a half dozen of the crew presently rolled them aboard the sloop.
A breeze had come up as the sun rose higher, and in an hour or more—it was about the middle of the morning—the fog began to drift away in bright yellow clouds, through which the disk of the sun shone thin and watery. Now and then the outline of the houses on the shore stood out faint and dim; they looked very different to Jack in the wide light of day. Then the sun burst out in a sudden bright, hot gleam. The pirate captain had gone below, but Dred and the sailing-master, Hands, were on deck. The boatswain’s whistle trilled shrilly, and the great patched, dingy mainsail, flapping and bellying sluggishly, rose slowly with the yo-hoing of the sailors and the creaking of block and tackle. The lines were cast loose, Dred standing directing the men as they pushed the sloop off with the sweeps. Some of the settlers had come down to the shore, and stood watching. “All away!” called Dred, and Hands spun the wheel around. The sloop fell slowly off, the sail filling out smooth and round. The men on the wharf shouted an adieu, and two or three of the men aboard the sloop replied, and then they were out in the wide expanse of the river.