Book 5 — CHAPTER XX.

IN WHICH SHEPPARD LEE REACHES THE DARKEST PERIOD OF HIS EXISTENCE.

Seeing this, I became horribly frightened—indeed, so much so, that I was incapable of observing properly what ensued. I have a faint recollection that Mr. Hampden Jones resumed his discourse and harangued those who would listen, on the subject he had promised to discuss; and I remember that his auditors echoed every tenth word with tremendous shouts. But what I remember better than all was, a spectacle that soon attracted my attention, being nothing less than the apparition of five or six stout negroes climbing up a tree hard by, dragging a rope after them, and tying it round a branch; all which they executed with uncommon spirit and zeal, shaking their fists at me all the time, and calling me a "cussed bobolitionist."

What was to become of me now? Had I entered the body of the most generous and humane of men only to be hanged? A cold sweat broke over me; my knees knocked together. The men who held me, held me faster. My judges, the members of the great and solemn tribunal, began to decide upon my fate with the regularity and decorum (advised by their orator) which were to win the approbation and admiration of the whole world— that is to say, by each man marching up to the orator's barrel, where stood a committee appointed to receive the votes, pronouncing his name, and voting to "hang the incendiary."

All this while, I believe, I was endeavouring to say something in my defence; but I have not the slightest recollection of what it was. Matters were coming—I may say had come—to a crisis, and my life hung upon a thread; when suddenly a negro, who had been among the most active and zealous of the volunteers on the tree, fell from a high branch to the ground, and besides breaking his own neck, as I understood by the cry that was set up, crushed two or three white men that stood below.

This produced a great hubbub, and those who had stationed themselves about me as guards ran forward to see what mischief had been done. As they ran one way, I betook me to my heels and ran another. I rushed into the nearest house; but, being instantly pursued and ousted, I fled into a garden, from which I was as quickly chased by men and dogs, the first screaming, and the second howling and barking, so that the uproar they made was inexpressible.

Fear lent me wings; but I was surrounded; and run whithersoever I might, I always found myself brought up by some party or other presenting itself in front. The exercise, while it inflamed my own terrors, only exasperated the rage of my persecutors; and I was persuaded they would tear me to pieces the moment they caught me. Judge of my feelings, then, when I found myself hemmed in on all sides in a little field on the skirts of the village, with a party close at my elbow, on which I had stumbled without seeing it until roused by its cries.

I looked up and saw that it consisted of about a dozen negroes, who were carrying the body of their companion, the unlucky volunteer who had broken his neck falling from the tree; but which body they now threw upon the ground, and with loud screams of "He-ah, mossa John!" and "He-ah, mossa Dickey!" began to scamper after me with all their might.

There was but one resource left me, and that let the reader determine hereafter of how deplorable a character. I made a successful dodge, followed by a dash right through the screaming Africans, who perhaps hesitated to lay a rough hand on one of my colour, and, reaching the body of their companion, cried, half to myself and half to the insensible clay, "It is better to be a slave than a dead man; and the scourge, whatever romantic persons may say to the contrary, is preferable, at any time, to the halter. If thou art dead, my sable brother, yield my spirit a refuge in thy useless body!"

That was the last I remember of the adventure, for I had no sooner uttered the words than I fell into a trance.