Cudjo's Cave Part 29

"Being a fugitive slave, he feared lest he should find little favor in the eyes of his master's neighbors," said Penn.

"That's where he was right!" said Deslow, with a bigoted and unforgiving expression. "Nothing under the sun shall make me give encouragement to a n.i.g.g.e.r's running away."

Two or three others nodded grim a.s.sent to this first principle of the slaveholder's discipline. Penn was fired with exasperation and scorn, and would have separated himself from these narrow-minded patriots on the spot, had not Stackridge jumped up from the ground upon which he had thrown himself, and, striking his gun barrel fiercely, exclaimed,--

"Now, that's what I call cursed foolishness, Deslow! and every man that holds to that way of thinking had better go over to t'other side to oncet! If we can't make up our minds to sacrifice our property, and, what's more to some folks, our prejudices, in the cause we're fighting for, we may as well stop before we stir a step further. I'm a slaveholder, and always have been; but I swear, I can't say as I ever felt it was such a divine inst.i.tution as some try to make it out, and I don't believe there's a man here that thinks in his heart that it's just right. And as for the n.i.g.g.e.rs running away, my private sentiment is, that I don't blame 'em a mite. You or I, Deslow, would run in their place; you know you would." And Stackridge wiped his brow savagely.

"And as for this particular case," said Captain Grudd, with a gleam of light in his lean and swarthy countenance, "don't le's be blind to our own interests; don't le's be downright fools. I've said from the first that slavery and the rebellion was brother and sister,--they go together; and I've made up my mind to stand by my country and the old flag, whatever comes of the inst.i.tution." All, except the conservative Deslow, applauded this resolution. "Then consider," added the captain, his deliberate, impressive manner proving quite as effective as Stackridge's more excited and fiery style,--"here we are fighting for our very lives and liberties; and if, as I say, slavery's the cause of this war, then we're fighting against slavery, the best we can fix it.

How monstrous absurd 'twill be, then, for us to refuse the a.s.sistance of any n.i.g.g.e.r that has it to give! Bythewood, Pomp's owner, is one of the hottest secessionists I know; and d'ye think I want Pomp sent back to him, to help that side, when he has shown that he can be of such mighty good service to us? I move that we send the professor to make a treaty with him. What do you say, Mr. Hapgood?"

"I say," replied Penn with enthusiasm, "that he and Cudjo are in a condition to do infinitely more for us than we can do for them; and if their alliance can be secured, I say that we ought by all means to secure it."

"That depends," said Grudd, "upon what we intend to do. Are we going to make a stand here, and see if the loyal part of old Tennessee will rise up and sustain us? or are we going to fight our way over the mountains, and never come back till a Union army comes with us to set things a little to rights here?"

"Wa'al," said Withers, who concealed a hardy courage and earnest patriotism under a phlegmatic and droll exterior, "while we're discussin' that question, I reckon we may as well have breakfast. This is as good a place as any,--we can take turns keeping a lookout from that ledge."

He proceeded to kindle a fire in the hollow. The fugitives, in pa.s.sing a field of corn, had thrust into their pockets a plentiful supply of green ears, which they now husked and roasted. There was a spring in the rocks near by, from which they drank lying on their faces, and dipping in their beards. This was their breakfast; during which Penn's mission to the blacks was fully discussed, and finally decided upon.

The meal concluded, the refugees resumed their march, and entered an immense thick wood farther up the mountain. In a cool and shadowy spot they halted once more; and here Penn took leave of them, setting out on his visit to the cave.

He had a mile to travel over a rough, wild region, where the fires that had formerly devastated it had left the only visible marks of a near civilization. In a tranquil little dell that had grown up to wild gra.s.s, he came suddenly upon a horse feeding. It was Stackridge's useful nag, which looked up from his lofty grove-shaded pasture with a low whinny of recognition as Penn patted his neck and pa.s.sed along.

A furlong or two farther on the well-known ravine opened,--dark, silent, profound, with its s.h.a.ggy sides, one in shadow and the other in the sun, and its little embowered brook trickling far down there amid mossy stones;--as lonesome, wild, and solitary as if no human eye had ever beheld it before.

Penn glided over the ledges, and descended along the narrow shelf of rock, behind the thickets that screened the entrance to the cave.

Sunlight, and mountain wind, and summer heat he left behind, and entered the cool, still, gloomy abode.

Cudjo ran to the mouth of the cave to meet him. "Lef me frow dis yer blanket ober your shoulders, while ye cool off; cotch yer de'f cold, if ye don't. De ol' man's a 'speckin' ye."

Penn was relieved to learn that Mr. Villars had arrived in safety, and gratified to find him lying comfortably on the bed conversing with Pomp.

"By the blessing of G.o.d, I am very well indeed, my dear Penn. These excellent fellow-Christians have taken the best of care of me. The atmosphere of the cave, which I thought at first chilly, I now find deliciously pure and refres.h.i.+ng. And its gloom, you know, don't trouble me," added the blind old man with a smile. "Have you had any more trouble since Pomp left you?"

"No," said Penn; "thanks to him. Pomp, our friends want to see you and thank you, and they have sent me to bring you to them."

The negro merely shrugged his shoulders, and smiled.

"What good der tanks do to we?" cried Cudjo. "Ain't one ob dem ar men but what would been glad to hab us cotched and licked for runnin' away, fur de 'xample to de tudder n.i.g.g.e.rs."

"If that was true of them once, it is not now," said Penn. "Yet, Pomp, if you feel that there is the least danger in going to them, do not go."

"Danger?" The negro's proud and lofty look showed what he thought of that. "Cudjo, make Mr. Hapgood a cup of coffee; he looks tired. You have had a hard time, I reckon, since you left us."

"Him stay wid us now till he chirk up again," said Cudjo, running to his coffee-box. "Him and de ol' gemman stay--n.o.body else."

While the coffee was making, Penn, sitting on one of the stone blocks which he had named giant's stools, repeated such parts of the late breakfast talk of Stackridge and his friends as he thought would interest Pomp and win his confidence. Then he drank the strong, black beverage in silence, leaving the negro to his own reflections.

"Are you going again?" said Pomp.

"Yes; I promised them I would return."

"Take some coffee and a kettle to boil it in; they will be glad of it, I should think."

"O Pomp! you know how to do good even to your enemies! What shall I say to them for you?"

"What I have to say to them I will say myself," said Pomp, taking his rifle in one hand, and the kettle in the other, to Cudjo's great wrath and disgust.

He set out with Penn immediately. They found the patriots reposing themselves about the roots of the forest trees, on the banks of a stream that came gurgling and plas.h.i.+ng down the mountain side. Above them spread the beautiful green tops of maples, tinted with suns.h.i.+ne and softly rustling in the breeze. The curving banks formed here a little natural amphitheatre, carpeted with moss and old leaves, on which they sat or reclined, with their hats off and their guns at their sides.

A sentry posted on the edge of the forest brought in Penn and his companion. There was a stir of interest among the patriots, and some of them rose to their feet. Stackridge, Grudd, and two or three others cordially offered the negro their hands, and pledged him their grat.i.tude and friends.h.i.+p. Pomp accepted these tokens of esteem in silence,--his countenance maintaining a somewhat haughty expression, his lips firm, his eyes kindling with a strange light.

Penn took the kettle, and proceeded, with Carl's help, to make a fire and prepare coffee for the company, intently listening the while to all that was said.

Jutting from one bank of the stream, which washed its base, was a huge, square block covered with dark-green moss. Upon this Pomp stepped, and rested his rifle upon it, and bared his ma.s.sive and splendid head, and stood facing his auditors with a placid smile, under the canopy of leaves. There was not among them all so n.o.ble a figure of a man as he who stood upon the rock; and he seemed to have chosen this somewhat theatrical att.i.tude in order to ill.u.s.trate, by his own imposing personal presence, the words that rose to his lips.

"You will excuse me, gentlemen, if I cannot forget that I am talking with those who buy and sell men like me!"

Men like him! The suggestion seemed for a moment to strike the slave-owning patriots dumb with surprise and embarra.s.sment.

"No, no, Pomp," cried Stackridge, "not men like you--there are few like you anywhere."

"I wish there was more like him, and that I owned a good gang of 'em!"

muttered the man Deslow.

"I don't," replied Withers, with a drawl which had a deep meaning in it; "twould be too much like sleeping on a row of powder barrels, with lighted candles stuck in the bung holes. Dangerous, them big knowin'

n.i.g.g.e.rs be."

Pomp did not answer for a minute, but stood as if gathering power into himself, with one long, deep breath inflating his chest, and casting a glance upward through the sun-lit summer foliage.

"You buy and sell men, and women, and children of my race. If I am not like them, it is because circ.u.mstances have lifted me out of the wretched condition in which it is your constant policy and endeavor to keep us. By your laws--the laws you make and uphold--I am this day claimed as a slave; by your laws I am hunted as a slave;--yes, some of you here have joined your neighbor in the hunt for me, as if I was no more than a wild beast to be hounded and shot down if I could not be caught. Now tell me what union or concord there can be between you and me!"

"I own," said Deslow,--for Pomp's gleaming eyes had darted significant lightnings at him,--"I did once come up here with Bythewood to see if we could find you. Not that I had anything against you, Pomp,--not a thing; and as for your quarrel with your master, I ain't sure but you had the right on't; but you know as well as we do that we can't countenance a n.i.g.g.e.r's running away, under any circ.u.mstances."

"No!" said Pomp, with sparkling sarcasm. "Your secessionist neighbors revolt against the mildest government in the world, and resort to bloodshed on account of some fancied wrongs. You revolt against them because you prefer the old government to theirs. Your forefathers went to war with the mother country on account of a few taxes. But a negro must not revolt, he must not even attempt to run away, although he feels the relentless heel of oppression grinding into the dust all his rights, all that is dear to him, all that he loves! A white man may take up arms to defend a bit of property; but a black man has no right to rise up and defend either his wife, or his child, or his liberty, or even his own life, against his master!"

Only the narrow-minded Deslow had the confidence to meet this stunning argument, enforced as it was by the speaker's powerful manner, superb physical manhood, and superior intelligence.

"You know, Pomp, that your condition, to begin with, is very different from that of any white man. Your relation to your master is not that of a man to his neighbor, or of a citizen to the government; it is that of property to its owner."

"Property!" There was something almost wicked in the wild, bright glance with which the negro repeated this word. "How came we property, sir?"

"Our laws make you so, and you have been acquired as property," said Deslow, not unkindly, but in his bigoted, obstinate way. "So, really, Pomp, you can't blame us for the view we take of it, though it does conflict a little with your choice in the matter."

"But suppose I can show you that you are wrong, and that even by your own laws we are not, and cannot be, property?" said Pomp, with a princely courtesy, looking down from the rock upon Deslow, so evidently in every way his inferior. "I will admit your t.i.tle to a lot of land you may purchase, or reclaim from nature; or to an animal you have captured, or bought, or raised. But a man's natural, original owner is--himself.

Now, I never sold myself. My father never sold himself. My father was stolen by pirates on the coast of Africa, and brought to this country, and sold. The man who bought him bought what had been stolen. By your own laws you cannot hold stolen property. Though it is bought and sold a thousand times, let the original owner appear, and it is his,--n.o.body else has the shadow of a claim. My father was stolen property, if he was property at all. He was his own rightful owner. Though he had been robbed of himself, that made no difference with the justice of the case.

It was so with my mother. It is so with me. It is the same with every black man on this continent. Not one ever sold himself, or can be sold, or can be owned. For to say that what a man steals or takes by force is his, to dispose of as he chooses, is to go back to barbarism: it is not the law of any Christian land. So much," added Pomp, blowing the words from him, as if all the false arguments in favor of slavery were no more to the man's soul, and its eternal, G.o.d-given rights, than the breath he blew contemptuously forth into those mountain woods,--"so much for the claim of PROPERTY!"

Penn was so delighted with this triumphant declaration of principles that he could have flung his hat into the maple boughs and shouted "Bravo!" He deemed it discreet, however, to confine the expression of his enthusiasm to a tight grasp on Carl's sympathetic hand, and to watch the effect of the speech on the rest.