by Howard Pyle
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 answe
red.
“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?”
