The Captain took his place at the reins, his picturesque velvet jacket, wide hat, bright hair, and gay shirt, thighings, belt, and boots, deserving all Patty Cannon's encomiums as he made a polite adieu and threw his whip like a thunderbolt, and a cheer rose from the discarded volunteers loitering about the tavern as he drove Joe Johnson and Levin away.
The road was nearly dead level for five miles, but, being the old travelled road from Laurel and the south to Easton, and pointing towards Baltimore, numerous farms and clearings were seen, and tobacco-fields alternated with the dry corn and new-ploughed wheat patches. Here and there, like a measure of gold poured upon the ground, the yellow ears lay in the gaunt corn-rows, to become the ground meal of the slave and the cattle's winter substance. Joe Johnson's popularity was everywhere apparent, and many a shout was given of, "Good luck to ye, Joe!" "Tote us a nigger back from Delaway, Joe!" "Don't be too hard on them ar black Blue Hen's chickens, Joe!"
Van Dorn was too far above the comprehension of his neighbors, or, indeed, of anybody, to be familiarly addressed, but "Patty Cannon's man" was the term of injured inferiority towards him after he had passed.
At Federalsburg they crossed the branch of the Nanticoke piercing to the centre of Delaware state, and saw one large brick house of colonial appearance dominating the little wooden hamlet, and here, as generally within the Maryland line, hunting negroes was the "lark" or the serious occupation of many an idle or enterprising fellow, who trained his negro scouts like a setter, or more often like a spaniel, and crossed the line on appointed nights as ardently and warily as the white trader in Africa takes to the trails of the interior for human prey.
"Joe," said Van Dorn, "what is to be your disposition of the prisoners we have?"
"All goes with me to Norfolk but one,--the nigger boxer; I burn him alive on Twiford's island. If the white chap is too pickle to sell, I'll throw him overboard; he ain't safe."
"Ea! sus! it is boyish to burn the old lad. I have had many a blow from a black, and stab, too. A dog will bite you if you lasso him."
"No nigger can knock me down and git off with selling."
"Then you are a bad trader. The negro's price is all the negro is; why make him your equal by hating him?"
"I am a Delaware boy," Joe Johnson said, "and it's the pride with me to give no nigger a chance. In Maryland you pets 'em, like ole Colonel Ned Lloyd over yer on the Wye; he's give his nigger coachman a gole watch an' chain because he's his son! What a nimenog! Some day he'll raise a nigger that'll be makin' politikle speeches, an' then I don't want to live no more."
"Chito! Since the Delaware lawyer sent you to the post, son-in-law, you're morose. I have had to eat with negro princes, dance with their queens, and be ceremonious as if they had been angels."
"It would be the reign of Queen Dick for me! I couldn't do it, nohow."
"And, by the way, Joseph, I may see your friend, the lawyer Clayton, at Dover, to-night: he may send me to the post, too; and I fear no Delaware governor will take off the cropping of my ears, as was done for you in state patriotism."
"Beware of that imp of Tolobon!" Joe Johnson muttered. "How I wish you could kill him, Van Dorn. He's got to be a senator; some day he'll be chief-justice of Delaware: then, what'll niggers be wuth thar?"
"I fancy, Joseph, you might be a legislator in Delaware if your inclinations ran that way?"
"Easy enough, but I makes legislators. My wife, Margaretta--her first husband's sister is the wife of the chancellor."
"Hola! oh! How came that great alliance?"
"She was housekeeper; he was a close old bachelor and must break a leg. 'Well,' she says, 'you're a daddy; justice is your trade, and I must have it.' So, from bein' his peculiar, she becomes the madam; but she inwented the kid."
"I have never been in Dover; how shall I tell where Lawyer Clayton dwells?"
"It's on the green a-middle of the town, a-standin' by the state-house--a long, roughcast house in the corner, three stories high, with two doors; the door next the state-house is his office. Go past the state-house, which has a cupelo onto it, an' you see the jug an' whippin'-post. He's got 'em handy fur you."
Levin listened with all his ears. The liquor was now well out of his system, and he thanked God he had refused Patty Cannon's burning dram, else he might be this night--he thought it with remorse--the reckless mate for Owen Daw, whose own mother had predicted the gallows for him.
"And now, Van Dorn, I turn back," Joe Johnson said; "I have a job to do down the Peninsuly. McLane has become the owner of a gal thar, an' wants her sneaked. I takes black Dave with me, an' when I'm back, my boat will be ready an' my cargo packed. Then hey fur Floridey!"
He unhaltered his horse at the tail of the wagon, mounted him, and rode back across the stream. Van Dorn touched his horses and entered the dense woods in a byway to the north.
"Get up here, Master Levin, and ride by me," the Captain said, very soon, and he lifted Levin's old hat from his head and looked at his bright hair parted in the middle, his fine, large eyes, needing the light of knowledge, and his soft complexion and marks of good extraction.
"Where is thy father, Levin, to let thee go so ragged, with such graceful limbs and feet as these?"
"Shipwrecked," said Levin; "gone down, I 'spect, on the privateer."
"A sailor, was he? Well, he should be home to clothe thee and see that thou dost not cheat. I marked how Madam Cannon's punch was tossed out of the window."
"I thought you would not want me drunk beside you all night, sir, and then I might enjoy your company. I don't want to drink no more liquor."
"You like my company?"
"Yes, sir."
The Captain blushed, and asked,
"Why do you like me?"
"Not fur nothin' you do, sir. I like you fur somethin' in your ways; I reckon you're a smart man."
"Si, senor, that I am. I have gained the whole world and lost two."
"Two worlds, sir?"
"Yes, two immortal worlds; that is to say, two unaccountable worlds. I am no Christian."
"Maybe you're Chinee or Mahometan, then, sir; I 'spect everybody's got a religion."
"I was a Mahometan for business ends," Van Dorn said. "Having become a slaver, it was nothing to be a renegade. Stealing a man's soul every day, I put no value on mine. Yes, Mahomet is the prophet of God: so are you."
"You have been in Afrikey, I 'spect," suggested Levin.
"A few years only, but long enough to be rich and to be ruined. I know the negro coast from the Gambia to Cape Palmas, and inland to Timbo. I have had an African queen and the African fever: I went to conquer Africa and became a slave."
"In Africa, I 'spect, Captain," Levin remarked, without inference, "a nigger-trader is respectable."
Van Dorn shook his head.
"I doubt if that trade is respectable anywhere on this globe, unless it be here. No, I will say for these people, too, that while they do it low lip homage, they look down on it. I was once the greatest guest in Timbo, housed with its absolute prince, attended by my suite, looking like an ambassador, and he called me 'his son' and drew me to his breast. Proclamations were made that I should be respected as such, yet every human object fled before me. As I rode out alone to see the gardens and cassava fields, the roaming goats and oxen, and the rich mountain prospects, and saw the sloe-eyed girls bathing in the brooks, the cry went round, 'Flesh-buyer is coming,' and huts were deserted, fields forsaken, the gray patriarchs and the little children ran, and I was left alone with the dumb animals, despised, abhorred."
"Don't they have slavery thair, sir?"
"Yes, slavery immemorial, yet the slave-buyer is no more respectable than the procurer. The coin of Africa, its only medium, was the slave. He paid the debt of war, of luxury, and of business. Yet the soul of man, in the familiar study of such universal slavery, grovels with it, and points to bright destiny no more with the head erect: I died in Africa."
"Ain't you in the business now, sir?"
"Now I am a mere forest thief and bushman, Levin. He who begins a base trade rises early to its fulness, and in subsequent life must be a poor wolf rejected from the pack, stealing where he can sneak in. Such is the kidnapper eking out the decayed days of the slaver; such is the ruined voluptuary, living at last on the earnings of some shameless woman; such am I: behold me!"
Van Dorn's eyes turned on Levin in their cold, heartless light, and yet he blushed, as usual.
"You ought to be a gentleman, Captain. What made you break the laws so and be a bad man?"
"Ayme! ayme!" mused Van Dorn, "shall I tell you? It was Africa. I was a high-minded youth, cool and bold, and with a thread of pleasure in me. I went to sea in a manly trade, and, fortune being slow, they whispered to me, in the West Indies, that my clipper was just the thing for the slave-trade, and I made the first venture out of virtue, which is all the voyage. In Africa I fell a prey to the voluptuous life a white man leads there, to which the very missionaries are not always exceptions. Young, pale, gentle, graceful, brave, my blushes instant as my passions, the ceaseless intrigue of that hot climate circled around me like a dance in the harem around the young intruder: I forgot my native land and every obligation in it; I was enslaved by Africa to its swooning joys; I went there like the serpent and was stung by the woman."
"Ain't they all right black and ugly in Africa, Captain?"
"The world has not the equals of Senegambia for beauty," said Van Dorn. "The Fullah beauties are often almost white, and the black admixture is no more than varnish on the maple-tree. And even here, my lad, where civilization builds a wall of social fire around the slave, you often mark the idolatry of the white head to captive Africa."
"Did you make money?"
"For some years I did, plenty of it; but degradation in the midst of pleasure weighed down my spirits. The thing called honor had flown from over me like the heavenly dove, and in its place a hundred painted birds flocked joyfully, the dazzling creatures of that thoughtless world. Oh, that I could have been born there or never have seen it! At last I started home, but the world had adopted a new commandment, 'Thou shalt not trade in man.' They took my ship and all its black cargo, and I came home naked. Then my heart was broke, and I turned kidnapper."
"Home is the best place," said Levin; "I 'spect it is, even if folks is pore. When Jimmy Phoebus give me a boat I thought I was rich as a Jew."
"What is that name?" asked Van Dorn.
"James Phoebus: he's mother's sweetheart."
"Ce ce ce!" the Captain mused; "your mother lives, then?"
"Yes, sir. She's pore, but Jimmy loves her, and the ghost of father feeds her."
"Quedo! a ghost? what kind of thing is that? Aunt Patty sees them: I never do."
"It comes an' puts sugar an' coffee in the window, an' sometimes a pair of shoes an' a dress. Mother says it's father: I guess it is."
"O Dios!" lisped Van Dorn. "This Phoebus, is he a good man?"
"Brave as a lion, sir; pore as any pungy captain; the best friend I ever had. I hoped mother would marry him, he's been a-waitin' fur her so long. She's afraid father ain't dead."
"O hala, hala! women are such waiters; but this man can wait too. Is he strong?"
"He come mighty nigh givin' Joe Johnson a lickin' last Sunday, sir, in Princess Anne. He hates a nigger-trader. Him an' Samson Hat, a black feller, thinks as much of each other as two brothers."
"And he gave you a boat?"
"Yes, sir: Joe Johnson hired it of me, but I didn't know he was goin' to run away niggers. He's got my boat an' ruined my credit, I 'spect, in Princess Anne, an' what will mother do when I go to jail?"
"Why, this other man, Phoebus, is there to marry her or look after her."
"Oh, Captain," sobbed Levin, putting his hands on Van Dorn's knees, and laying his orphan head there too, "pore Jimmy's dead: Joe Johnson shot him."
The Captain did not move or speak.
"I've been a drunkard, Captain," Levin sobbed again, in the confidence of a child; "that's whair all our misery comes from. I've got nothin' but my boat, an' people hires it to go gunnin' an' fishin' and spreein', and they takes liquor with 'em, an' I drinks. God help me; I never will agin, but die first!"
"Are you not afraid to lean on me?" lisped Van Dorn.
"No, sir."
"I have killed people, too."
"The Lord forgive you, sir; I know you won't kill me."
A sigh broke from the bandit's lips, in place of his usual soft lisp, and was followed by a warm drop of water, as from the forest leaves now bathed in night, that plashed on Levin's neck.
"O God," a soft voice said, "may I not die?"
Then Levin felt the same warm drops fall many times upon him, and his nature opened like the plants to rain.
"I have found a friend, Captain," the boy spoke, after several minutes, but not looking up; "I feel you cry."
"Chito! chito!" lisped Van Dorn; "here is Punch Hall."
Levin raised his head, and saw nothing but an old house standing in the trees, with a little faint light streaming from the door, and heard the low hilarity of drinking men. The whole band poured out to receive Van Dorn's commands.
"One hour here to feed and rest!" Van Dorn exclaimed. "Let those sleep who can. Let any straggle or riot who dare!"
