20. 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.
