“Assuredly,” said Dred. “And the King shall reign in righteousness. He shall deliver the needy when he crieth, —— the poor and him that hath no helper. He shall redeem their souls from deceit and violence. He shall sit upon a white cloud, and the rainbow shall be round about his head. And the elect of the Lord shall be kings and priests on the earth.”
“And do you think you shall be one of them?” said Clayton.
Dred gave a kind of inward groan.
“Not every one that prophesieth in his name shall be found worthy!” he said. “I have prayed the Lord, but He hath not granted me the assurance. I am the rod of his wrath to execute vengeance on his enemies. Shall the axe magnify itself against him that lifteth it?”
The conversation was here interrupted by Harry, who, suddenly springing from the tree, came up in a hurried and agitated manner.
“The devil is broke loose!” he said. “Tom Gordon is out, with his whole crew at his heels, beating the swamp! A more drunken, swearing, ferocious set I never saw! They have got on to the trail of poor Jim, and are tracking him without mercy!”
A. dark light flashed from Dred’s eye as he sprang upon his feet.
“The voice of the Lord shaketh the wilderness; yea, the wilderness of Kadesh. I will go forth and deliver him!”
He seized his rifle and shot-bag, and in a few moments was gone. It was Harry’s instinct to have followed him; but Lisette threw herself, weeping, on his neck.
“Don’t go, — don’t!” she said. “What shall we all do without you? Stay with us! You’ll certainly be killed, and you can do no good!”
“Consider,” said Clayton, “that you have not the familiarity with these swamps, nor the wonderful physical power of this man. It would only be throwing away your life.”
The hours of that day passed gloomily. Sometimes the brutal sound of the hunt seemed to sweep near them, — the crack of rifles, the baying of dogs, the sound of oaths, — and then again all went off into silence, and nothing was heard but the innocent patter of leaf upon leaf, and the warbling of the birds, singing cheerily, ignorant of the abyss of cruelty and crime over which they sang.
Toward sunset a rustling was heard in the branches of the oak, and Dred dropped down into the inclosure, wet and soiled, and wearied. All gathered round him in a moment.
“Where is Jim?” asked Harry.
“Slain!” said Dred. “The archers pressed him sore, and he hath fallen in the wilderness!”
There was a general exclamation of horror. Dred made a movement to sit down on the earth. He lost his balance and fell; and they all saw now, what at first they had not noticed, a wound in his breast, from which the blood was welling. His wife fell by his side with wild moans of sorrow. He lifted his hand and motioned her from him.
“Peace,” he said, “peace! It is enough! Behold, I go unto the witnesses who cry day and night!”
The circle stood around him in mute horror and surprise. Clayton was the first who had presence of mind to kneel and stanch the blood. Dred looked at him; his calm, large eyes filled with supernatural light.
“All over!” he said.
He put his hand calmly to his side, and felt the gushing blood. He took some in his hand and threw it upward, crying out with wild energy, in the words of an ancient prophet, —
“Oh, earth, earth, earth! Cover thou not my blood!”
Behind the dark barrier of the woods the sun was setting gloriously. Piles of loose, floating clouds, which all day long had been moving through the sky in white and silvery stillness, now one after another took up the rosy flush, and became each one a light-bearer filled with ethereal radiance. And the birds sang on as they ever sing, unterrified by the great wail of human sorrow.
It was evident to the little circle that He who is mightier than the kings of the earth was there, and that that splendid frame, which had so long rejoiced in the exuberance of health and strength, was now to be resolved again into the eternal elements.
“Harry,” he said, “lay me beneath the heap of witness. Let the God of their fathers judge between us!”
CHAPTER LIII
THE BURIAL
THE death of Dred fell like a night of despair on the hearts of the little fugitive-circle in the swamps, — on the hearts of multitudes in the surrounding plantations, who had regarded him as a prophet and a deliverer. He in whom they trusted was dead! The splendid, athletic form, so full of wild vitality, the powerful arm, the trained and keen-seeing eye, all struck down at once! The grand and solemn voice hushed, and all the splendid poetry of olden time, the inspiring symbols and prophetic dreams, which had so wrought upon his own soul, and with which he had wrought upon the souls of others, seemed to pass away with him, and to recede into the distance and become unsubstantial, like the remembered sounds of mighty winds, or solemn visions of evening clouds, in times long departed.
On that night, when the woods had ceased to reverberate the brutal sounds of baying dogs, and the more brutal profanity of drunken men; when the leaves stood still on the trees, and the forest lay piled up in the darkness like black clouds, and the morning star was standing like a calm angelic presence above them, — there might have been heard in the little clearing a muffled sound of footsteps, treading heavily, and voices of those that wept with a repressed and quiet weeping, as they bore the wild chieftain to his grave beneath the blasted tree. Of the undaunted circle who had met there at the same hour many evenings before, some had dared to be present to-night; for, hearing the report of the hunt, they had left their huts on the plantations by stealth, when all were asleep, and, eluding the vigilance of the patrols, the night-watch which commonly guards plantations, had come to the forest to learn the fate of their friends; and bitter was the dismay and anguish which filled their souls when they learned the result. It is melancholy to reflect that among the children of one Father an event which excites in one class bitterness and lamentation should in another be cause of exultation and triumph. But the world has been thousands of years and not yet learned the first two words of the Lord’s Prayer; and not until all tribes and nations have learned these will his kingdom come, and his will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Among those who stood around the grave, none seemed more bowed down and despairing than one whom we have before introduced to the reader under the name of Hannibal. He was a tall and splendidly formed negro, whose large head, high forehead, and marked features indicated resolution and intellectual ability. He had been all his life held as the property of an uneducated man, of very mean and parsimonious character, who was singularly divided in his treatment of him by a desire to make the most of his energies and capabilities as a slave, and a fear lest they should develop so fast as to render him unfit for the condition of slavery.
Hannibal had taught himself to read and write, but the secret of the acquisition was guarded in his own bosom as vigilantly as the traveler among thieves would conceal in his breast an inestimable diamond; for he well knew that, were these acquisitions discovered, his master’s fears would be so excited as to lead him to realize at once a present sum upon him by selling him to the more hopeless prison-house of the far South, thus separating him from his wife and family.
Hannibal was generally employed as the keeper of a ferryboat by his master, and during the hours when he was waiting for passengers found many opportunities for gratifying, in an imperfect manner, his thirst for knowledge.
Those who have always had books about them, more than they could or would read, know nothing of the passionate eagerness with which a repressed and starved intellect devours in secret its stolen food. In a little chink between the logs of his ferry-house there was secreted a Bible, a copy of “Robinson Crusoe,” and an odd number of a Northern newspaper which had been dropped from the pocket of a passenger; and when the door was shut and barred at night, and his bit of pine knot lighted, he would take these out and read them hour by hour. There he yearned after the wild freedom of the desolate island. He placed his wife and children, in imaginati
on, in the little barricaded abode of Robinson. He hunted and made coats of skin, and gathered strange fruits from trees with unknown names, and felt himself a free man.
Over a soul so strong and so repressed it is not to be wondered at that Dred should have acquired a peculiar power. The study of the Bible had awakened in his mind that vague tumult of aspirations and hopes which it ever excites in the human breast; and he was prompt to believe that the Lord who visited Israel in Egypt had listened to the sighings of their captivity, and sent a prophet and a deliverer to his people. Like a torch carried in a stormy night, this hope had blazed up within him; but the cold blast of death had whistled by, and it was extinguished forever.
Among the small band that stood around the dead, on the edge of the grave, he stood, looking fixedly on the face of the departed. In the quaint and shaggy mound to which Dred had attached that strange, rugged, Oriental appellation, Jegar Sahadutha, or the “heap of witness,” there was wildly flaring a huge pine-knot torch, whose light fell with a red, distinct glare on the prostrate form that lay there like a kingly cedar uprooted, no more to wave its branches in air, yet mighty in its fall, with all the shaggy majesty of its branches around. Whatever might have been the strife and struggle of the soul once imprisoned in that form, there was stamped upon the sombre face an expression of majestic and mournful tranquillity, as if that long-suffering and gracious God, to whose judgment he had made his last appeal, had rendered that judgment in mercy. When the statesmen and mighty men of our race die, though they had the weaknesses and sins of humanity, they want not orators in the church to draw the veil gently, to speak softly of their errors and loudly of their good, and to predict for them, if not an abundant entrance, yet at least a safe asylum among the blessed; and something not to be rebuked in our common nature inclines to join in a hopeful amen. It is not easy for us to believe that a great and powerful soul can be lost to God and itself forever.
But he who lies here so still and mournfully in this flickering torch-light had struggling within him the energies which make the patriot and the prophet. Crushed beneath a mountain of ignorance, they rose blind and distorted; yet, had knowledge enlightened and success crowned them, his name might have been, with that of Toussaint, celebrated in mournful sonnet by the deepest-thinking poet of the age: —
“Thou hast left behind
Powers that will work for thee, — air, earth, and skies;
There’s not a breathing of the common wind
That will forget thee; thou hast great allies;
Thy friends are exaltations, agonies,
And love, and man’s unconquerable mind.”
The weight of so great an affliction seemed to have repressed the usual vivacity with which the negro is wont to indulge the expression of grief. When the body was laid down by the side of the grave, there was for a time a silence so deep that the rustling of the leaves, and the wild, doleful clamor of the frogs and turtles in the swamps, and the surge of the winds in the pine-tree tops, were all that met the ear. Even the wife of the dead stood, with her shawl wrapped tightly about her, rocking to and fro, as if in the extremity of grief.
An old man in the company, who had officiated sometimes as preacher among the negroes, began to sing a well-known hymn very commonly used at negro funerals, possibly because its wild and gloomy imagery has something exciting to their quick imaginations. The words rose on the night air: —
“Hark, from the tombs a doleful sound,
My ears attend the cry;
Ye living men, come view the ground
Where you must shortly lie.”
During the singing of this verse Hannibal stood silent, with his arms gloomily folded, his eyes fixed on the lifeless face. Gradually the sentiment seemed to inspire his soul with a kind of serene triumph; he lifted his head, and joined his deep bass voice in the singing of the second verse: —
“Princes, this clay must be your bed,
In spite of all your towers;
The tall, the wise, the reverend head,
Must lie as low as ours.”
“Yes,” he said, “brethren, that will be the way of it. They triumph and lord it over us now, but their pomp will be brought down to the grave, and the noise of their viols. The worm shall be spread under them, and the worm shall cover them; and when we come to stand together at the judgment seat, our testimony will be took there if it never was afore; and the Lord will judge atween us and our oppressors, that’s one comfort. Now, brethren, let’s jest lay him in the grave, and he that’s a better man, or would have done better in his place, let him judge him if he dares.”
They lifted him up and laid him into the grave; and in a few moments all the mortal signs by which that soul had been known on earth had vanished, to appear no more till the great day of judgment and decision.
CHAPTER LIV
THE ESCAPE
CLAYTON had not been an unsympathizing or inattentive witness of these scenes. It is true that he knew not the whole depth of the affair; but Harry’s letter and his own observations had led him, without explanation, to feel that there was a perilous degree of excitement in some of the actors in the scene before him, which, unless some escape-valve were opened, might lead to most fatal results.
The day after the funeral, he talked with Harry, wisely and kindly, assuming nothing to himself on the ground either of birth or position; showing to him the undesirableness and hopelessness, under present circumstances, of any attempt to right by force the wrongs under which his class were suffering, and opening to him and his associates a prospect of a safer way by flight to the free States.
One can scarcely appreciate the moral resolution and force of character which could make a person in Clayton’s position in society — himself sustaining, in the eye of the law, the legal relation of a slave-holder — give advice of this kind. No crime is visited with more unsparing rigor by the regime of Southern society than the aiding or abetting the escape of a slave. He who does it is tried as a negro-stealer; and in some States death, in others a long and disgraceful imprison, ment in the penitentiary, is the award.
For granting the slightest assistance and succor in cases like these — for harboring the fugitive for even a night, for giving him the meanest shelter and food — persons have been stripped of their whole property, and turned out destitute upon the world. Others, for no other crime, have languished years in unhealthy dungeons, and coming out at last with broken health and wasted energies; nor has the most saintly patience and purity of character in the victim been able to lessen or mitigate the penalty.
It was therefore only by the discerning power of a mind sufficiently clear and strong to see its way through the mists of educational association, that Clayton could feel himself to be doing right in thus violating the laws and customs of the social state under which he was born. But, in addition to his belief in the inalienable right of every man to liberty, he had at this time a firm conviction that nothing but the removal of some of these minds from the oppressions which were goading them could prevent a development of bloody insurrection.
It is probable that nothing has awakened more bitterly the animosity of the slave-holding community than the existence in the Northern States of an indefinite yet very energetic institution known as the underground railroad; and yet, would they, but reflect wisely on the things that belong to their peace, they would know that this has removed many a danger from their dwellings. One has only to become well acquainted with some of those fearless and energetic men, who have found their way to freedom by its means, to feel certain that such minds and hearts would have proved, in time, an incendiary magazine under the scorching reign of slavery. But by means of this, men of that class who cannot be kept in slavery have found a road to liberty which endangered the shedding of no blood but their own; and the record of the strange and perilous means by which these escapes have been accomplished sufficiently shows the resolute nature of the men by whom they were undertaken.
It was soon agreed that a la
rge party of fugitives should in concert effect their escape. Harry, being so white as easily to escape detection out of the immediate vicinity where he was known, assumed the task of making arrangements, for which he was amply supplied with money by Clayton.
It is well known that there are, during the greater part of the year, lumberers engaged in the cutting and making of shingles, who have extensive camps in the swamp, and live there for months at a time. These camps are made by laying foundations of logs on the spongy soil, thus forming platforms on which rude cabins are erected. In the same manner roads are constructed into distant parts of the swamp, by means of which transportation is carried on. There is also a canal cut through the middle of the swamp, on which small sailing craft pass backwards and forwards with shingles and produce.
In the employ of these lumberers are multitudes of slaves hired from surrounding proprietors. They live here in a situation of comparative freedom, being obliged to make a certain number of staves or shingles within a stipulated time, and being furnished with very comfortable provision. Living thus somewhat in the condition of free men, they are said to be more intelligent, energetic, and self-respecting than the generality of slaves. The camp of the fugitives had not been without intercourse with the camp of lumberers, some five miles distant. In cases of straits they had received secret supplies from them, and one or two of the more daring and intelligent of the slave lumberers had attended some of Dred’s midnight meetings. It was determined, therefore, to negotiate with one of the slaves who commanded a lighter, or small vessel, in which lumber was conveyed to Norfolk, to assist their escape.
On some consultation, however, it was found that the numbers wanting to escape were so large as not to be able, without exciting suspicion, to travel together, and it was therefore decided to make two detachments. Milly had determined to cast in her lot with the fugitives, out of regard to her grandchild, poor little Tomtit, whose utter and merry thoughtlessness formed a touching contrast to the gravity and earnestness of her affections and desires for him. He was to her the only remaining memorial of a large family, which had been torn from her by the ordinary reverses and chances of slavery; and she clung to him, therefore, with the undivided energy of her great heart. As far as her own rights were concerned, she would have made a willing surrender of them, remaining patiently in the condition wherein she was called, and bearing injustice and oppression as a means of spiritual improvement, and seeking to do what good lay in her power.
Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe Page 122
