University of Virginia Library

16. 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,—
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.