Book 5 — CHAPTER XVII.

CONTAINING OTHER SECRETS, BUT NOT SO IMPORTANT.

Reader, if thou art an abolitionist (and, verily, I hope thou art not), thou wilt conceive the mingled wo and astonishment with which I listened to these words of the chief kidnapper—whose Christian name, by-the-way, was Joshua, though as for his surname, I must confess I never heard it—and appreciate, even to the cold creeping of the flesh, the terrible situation in which I was placed. I was an abolitionist—or, at least, my captors chose so to consider me, and they were now carrying me down south, to sell me on speculation. For this they had kidnapped me! for this they had fastened me up by the legs like a "wild baw!" for this—but it is vain to accumulate phrases expressive of their villany and my distresses. What mattered it to my captors if, after all, I was no abolitionist? (for, of a verity, though opposed in principle to the whole institution of slavery, my mind had been so fully occupied with other philanthropic considerations that I had had no time to play the liberator)—it was all one to my captors. The genius which could convert a hemlock-knot into a shoulder of bacon, a bundle of elder twigs into good Havana cigars, and bags of carpet-rags into Bologna sausages, could be at no fault when the demand was only to transform a peaceable follower of George Fox into a roaring lion of abolition. I felt that they had got me into a quandary more dreadful than any that had ever before afflicted my spirit. I knew we were already far south of Mason's and Dixon's.

The moment my vile kidnappers slackened their speed a little, having ridden hard to escape the negro-drivers, I called a parley, in the course of which two circumstances were brought to light, which greatly increased the afflictions of my spirit. I began by remonstrating with the villains upon the wickedness, cruelty, and injustice of their proceedings; to which Joshua made answer, that "times was hard—that a poor man was put to a hard shift to get a living—that, for his part, he was an honest man who turned his hand to any honest matter— that he knew what was lawful, and what was not—that he was agin all abolition, which was anti-constitutional, and clear for keeping the peace betwixt the North and South"—and twenty other things of a like nature, of which the most important was, a declaration that the good people of some parish or other in Louisiana had offered a reward of fifty thousand dollars for either of two individuals whose names I have forgotten, though they were very famous abolitionists, and although Joshua, to settle the matter at once, showed me their names in the advertisement, which he had cut from a newspaper.

"Friend," said I, "I don't see that these foolish people have offered any reward for me."

"Well, darn it, I know it," said Joshua; "but I rather estimate they'll give half price for you; and that will pay us right smart for the venture. For, you see, what they want is an abolitionist, and I rather estimate they're not over and above partickilar as to who he may be. Now I have heern tell of a heap of incendiary papers you sent down south to free the niggurs—"

"I never did any such thing!"

"Oh, well," said Joshua, "it's all one; them there sugar-growing fellers will think so; and so it's all right. And there's them runaway niggurs you Phil'delphy Quakers are always hiding away from their masters. I rather estimate we'll make a good venture out of you."

"What!" said I, "will you sell my life for money?"

"No," said the vile Joshua, "it's a mere trade in flesh and blood—wouldn't take a man's life on no consideration."

"Friend, thee shall have money if thee will permit me to escape."

"Well," said Joshua, with an indifferent drawl, "I estimate not. Abel Snipe told me you was cleaned out as clear as a gourd-shell."

"Abel Snipe!" said I; "is thee a friend of that villain, Abel Snipe?"

"A sorter," said Joshua; "or rather Sam is. Him and Abel was friends together at Sing—"

"Oh, blast your jaw," said Sam, speaking for almost the first time on the whole journey, for he had been, until then, uncommonly glum and taciturn; "where's the difference where it was? Says Abel Snipe to me, says he, 'If you want's an abolitionist, there's my old friend Zachariah; he's your true go.' And so, d'ye see, that's what made us snap you; for we was thinking of snapping another."

"Oh, the wretch! the base, ungrateful, hypocritical wretch!"

"Come, blast it," said Sam, "don't abuse a man's friends."

"Fellow," said I, "hast thou no human feeling in that breast of thine? Wilt thou sell me to violent men and madmen, who will wrongfully take my life?

"Think what thou doest! Hast thou no conscience? Thou art selling a fellow-being! Hast thou no fear of death and judgment? of the devil and the world of torment?"

"Oh, hold your gab," said the ruffian. "As for selling fellow-critters, why, that was once a reggelar business of mine; for, d'ye see, I was a body-snatcher. And I reckon I was more skeared once snapping up a dead body, than ever I shall be lifting a live one. You must know, I was snatching for the doctors, over there in Jarsey; for, d'ye see, I'm a Jarseyman myself: I reckon it was some fourteen months ago: it was summer. What the devil-be-cursed the doctor wanted with a body in summer, I don't know; but it was none on my business. So we, went, me and Tim Stokes, and the doctor, to an old burying-ground where they had just earthed a youngster that the doctor said would suit him. Well, d'ye see, when we came to the grave, up jumps a blasted devil, as big as a cow, or it might ha' been a ghost, and set up a cry. So we takes to our heels. But the doctor said 'twas a man's cry, and no ghost's. And so, d'ye see, blast it, we was for going back again, after having a confab; when what should we do but find a poor devil of a feller lying dead by a hole under a beech-tree. The doctor said he would do better nor the other; and so, blast it, d'ye see, we nabbed him."

"Of a surety," said I, eagerly, "it was the beech-tree at the Owl-roost! and that was the body of poor Sheppard Lee!"

"Well, they did call him summat of that like; and they made a great fuss about him in the papers. But I'm hanged if I wasn't skeared after that out of all body-snatching."

"Friend," said I, "can thee tell me what the doctor did with that body?"

"Why, cut him up, blast him, and made a raw-head-and-bloody-bones of him. The doctor was so cussed partickilar, he wouldn't let us even knock the teeth out; though that was no great loss, for Jarseymen hasn't no great shakes in the tooth way."

Alas! what an ending for poor Sheppard Lee! His body subjected to the knife of an anatomist, his bones scraped, boiled, bleached, hung together on wires, and set up in a museum, while his spirit was wandering about from body to body, enduring more afflictions in each than it had ever mourned even in that unlucky original dwelling it was so glad to leave! I am not of a sentimental turn, and I cannot say that, as Zachariah Longstraw, I felt any peculiar sorrow for the woes of Sheppard Lee. Nevertheless, I did not hear this account of the brutal way in which his body had been stolen and anatomized, without some touch of indignation and grief; which, perhaps, I should have expressed, had not there arisen, before the brutal Samuel had quite finished his remarks on Jerseymen's teeth, an occasion to exercise those feelings on my own immediate behalf.

This was produced by the vile Joshua, who had then the reins, telling a brace of horsemen whom we met that he had "the great abolitionist, the celebrated Zachariah Longstraw, in his cart," and was carrying him to be Lynched in Louisiana; a confession that threw the strangers into transports of satisfaction, one of them swearing he would accompany my captors to the Mississippi, or to the end of the earth, for the mere purpose of seeing me get my deservings.