Book 5 — CHAPTER XVI.

IN WHICH SHEPPARD LEE TAKES A JOURNEY, AND DISCOVERS THE SECRET OBJECT OF HIS CAPTORS.

Verily, reader, the thing was to me as an amazement and a marvel, and the wonder thereof filled my spirit with anguish and perturbation. But if I was dismayed at my seizure and abduction, at my involuntary journey, prolonged through the space of a whole night, how much greater was my alarm to find it continued for five days and nights longer, during which I was never allowed to speak or breathe the fresh air, except when my captors halted to rest and eat, which they did at irregular intervals, and always in solitary places among woods and thickets. It was in vain that I demanded by what authority they treated me with such violence, what purpose they had in view, and whither they were conducting me. The rogues assured me they were very honest fellows, who made their living according to law, and had no design to harm me; and as to what they designed doing with me, that, they said, I should know all in good time; recommending me, in the meanwhile, to take things patiently. I studied their appearance well. They were common-looking personages, with a vulgar shrewdness of visage, and would have been readily taken for Yankee pedlers of the nutmeg and side-saddle order—that is, of the inferior branch of that adventurous class—as indeed they were. There was nothing of the cut-throat about them whatever, and I soon ceased to feel any apprehension of their doing me a personal injury. But what did the villains mean? what was their object in carrying me off? what did they design doing with me? To these questions, which I asked myself and them in vain, I had, on the sixth day of my captivity, an answer; and verily it was one that filled me with horror and astonishment. Oh! the wickedness of man! the covetousness, the depravity, the audacity! the enterprise and originality thereof!

During the first three days of my captivity, my roguish captors had taken great pains to conceal me from, and to prevent any noises I might make from being heard by, any persons they met on the road. On the fourth day they relaxed somewhat from their severity; on the fifth they unbound my arms; and on the sixth they even removed the gag from my mouth, assuring me, however, that it should be replaced if I attempted any outcries, and giving me, moreover, to understand, that I was now in a land where outcries would be of no service to me whatever; and, indeed, I had soon the most mournful proof that, in this particular, they spoke nothing but the truth.

The evening before, I heard, while passing by a farmhouse, a great sawing of fiddles and strumming of banjoes, with a shuffling of feet, as of people engaged in a dance, while a voice, which I knew, by its undoubted Congo tang, could be none but a negro's, sang, in concert with the fiddles,—

"Ole Vaginnee! nebber ti—ah! Kick'm up, Juba, a leetle high—ah,—"

or something to that effect. And, while I was marvelling what could make a negro in Pennsylvania chant the praises of Virginia, having rolled a little further on, I heard, far in the distance, while our little nag stopped to drink from a brook, the sound of many voices, which I knew also were those of negroes. They were labourers husking corn in the light of the moon, and singing as they laboured; and, verily, there was something uncommonly agreeable in the tones, now swelling, now dying in the distance, as many or fewer voices joined in the song. There was a pleasing wildness in the music; but it was to me still more enchanting, as showing the light-heartedness of the singers. "Verily," said I, forgetting my woes in a sudden impulse of philanthropy, "the negro that is free is a happy being"—not doubting that I was still in Pennsylvania.

But oh, how grievously this conceit was dispersed on the following morning! I was roused out of sleep by the sound of voices and clanking of chains, and looking from the door of my prison, which my conductors had left open to give me air, I spied, just at the tail of the cart, a long train of negroes, men, women, and children, of whom some of the males were chained together, the children riding for the most part in covered wagons, while two white men on horseback, armed with great whips and pistols, rode before and behind, keeping the whole procession in order.

"What!" said I, filled with virtuous indignation, and thrusting my head from the cart so as to address the foremost rider, "what does thee mean, friend? Are these people slaves or freemen? and why dost thou conduct them thus in chains through the free state of Pennsylvania?"

"Pennsylvanee!" cried the man, with a stare; "I reckon we're fifty miles south of Mason's and Dixon's, and fast enough in old Virginnee."

"Virginia!" said I, seized with dismay. Before I could add any thing farther, one of my captors, jumping from the front of the cart, where he had been riding with the other, clapped to the door of the box, swearing at me for an old fool, who could not keep myself out of mischief.

"Hillo, stranger!" I heard the horseman cry to my jailer, "what white man's that you've got locked up thaw?"

"Oh, darn it," was the answer, "it's an old fellow of the north, jist as mad as the dickens."

"Friend!" cried I from my prison, seized with a sudden hope of escape, "the man tells thee a fib. If thee is an honest man and a lover of the law, I charge thee to give me help; for these men are villains, who have dragged me from my home contrary to law, and now have me fastened up by the legs."

"I say, strange-aw! by hooky!" cried the horseman, in very emphatic tones, addressing himself to my captor, as I saw through a crack, while his companion rode up to his assistance, "what's the meaning of all this he-aw? What aw you doing, toting a white man off in this style, like a wild baw?"

What a "wild baw" was I could not conveniently comprehend; but I saw that I had lighted on a friend, who had the power to deliver me from thraldom.

"My name," said I, "is Zachariah Longstraw, and I can reward thee for thy trouble."

"You hear him!" said my jailer, with all imaginable coolness. "Well now, darn it, if I must tell, it is Zachariah Longstraw, the famous Zachariah Longstraw. You understand!" And here he nodded and winked at the questioner with great significancy; but, as it appeared, all in vain.

"Never heard of the man in my life," said my friend, "and I've followed niggur-driving ever since I could hold a two-year-old bo' pig."

"What!" cried my jailer, "never heard of Zachariah Longstraw, the famous abolitionist?"

"Abolitionist!" cried the two horsemen together, and they cried it with a yell that made my hair stand on end. "Can't say ever heard the name, but reckon he's one of them 'aw New-Yorkers and Yankees what sends 'cendiary things down he-aw! I say, strange-aw! is it a true, right up-and-down, no-mistake abolitionist?"

"Darn it, I think you'd say so, if you had ever read the papers."

"Jist open the box then, and if I don't take the scalp off him, call me a black man!"

"You won't do no sitch thing, meaning no offence," said my jailer. "Didn't go to the expense to fetch him so far for nothing; and don't mean him for the Virginnee market. Bound down to Louisianee, stranger; that's the best market for abolitionists; seen a public advertisement offering fifty thousand dollars for fellers not half so bad. I rather estimate we'll get full price for our venture."

With that my jailers whipped up, and succeeded in putting a proper distance betwixt them and that ferocious person who had such a desire to rob me of my scalp.