University of Virginia Library

9. CHAPTER IX.

When Barnacle Sam returned to the encampment he was
alone. He immediately sought the conductor of the wagons, and,
without apprising him of his object, led him to the place of final
conference between himself and Hurst. The miserable man was
found suspended to a tree, life utterly extinct, the body already stiff
and cold. The horror of the conductor almost deprived him of utterance.
“Who has done this?” he asked.

“The hand of God, by the hand of his servant, which I am!
The judgment of Heaven is satisfied. The evil thing is removed
from among us, and we may now go on our way in peace. I
have brought thee hither that thou may'st see for thyself, and be
a witness to my work which is here ended. For seven weary
years have I striven in this object. Father, I thank thee, that at
the last thou hast been pleased to command that I should behold
it finished!”

These latter words were spoken while he was upon his knees,
at the very feet of the hanging man. The conductor, availing
himself of the utter absorption in prayer of the other, stole away
to the encampment, half-apprehensive that he himself might be
made to taste of the same sharp judgment which had been administered
to his companion. The encampment was soon roused,
and the wagoners hurried in high excitement to the scene. They
found Barnacle Sam still upon his knees. The sight of their
comrade suspended from the tree, enkindled all their anger. They
laid violent hands upon his executioner. He offered no resistance,
but showed no apprehension. To what lengths their fury would
have carried them may only be conjectured, but they had found
a rope, had fitted the noose, and in a few moments more they
would, in all probability, have run up the offender to the same
tree from which they had cut down his victim, when the timely
appearance of the troopers saved him from such a fate. The
esprit de corps came in seasonably for his preservation. It was

in vain that the wagoners pointed to the suspended man—in vain
that Barnacle Sam avowed his handiwork—“He is one of us,”
said the troopers; and the slightest movement of the others toward
hostility was resented with a handling so rough, as made it only
a becoming prudence to bear with their loss and abuses as they
best might. The wonder of all was, as they examined the body
of the victim, how it was possible for the executioner to effect his
purpose. Hurst was a man of middle size, rather stoutly built,
and in tolerably good case. He would have weighed about one
hundred and thirty. Barnacle Sam was of powerful frame and
great muscle, tall and stout, yet it seemed impossible, unless endued
with superhuman strength, that, unaided, he could have
achieved his purpose; and some of the troopers charitably surmised
that the wagoner had committed suicide; while the wagoners,
in turn, hurried to the conclusion that the executioner had
found assistance among the troopers. Both parties overlooked
the preternatural strength accruing, in such a case, from the excited
moral and mental condition of the survivor. They were not
philosophers enough to see that, believing himself engaged upon
the work of God, the enthusiast was really in possession of attributes,
the work of a morbid imagination, which seemed almost to
justify his pretensions to a communion with the superior world.
Besides, they assumed a struggle on the part of the victim. They
did not conjecture the influence of that spell by which the dominant
spirit had coerced the inferior, and made it docile as the
squirrel which the fascination of the snake brings to its very jaws,
in spite of all the instincts which teach it to know how fatal is the
enemy that lurks beneath the tree. The imbecile Hurst, conscious
as it were of his fate, seems to have so accorded to the
commands of his superior, as to contribute, in some degree, to his
designs. At all events, the deed was done; and Barnacle Sam
never said that the task was a hard one.

It was reserved for an examination of the body to find a full
military justification for the executioner, and to silence the clamours
of the wagoners. A screw bullet was found admirably folded
in the knot of his neck kerchief, which, it seems, was not withdrawn
from his neck when the kerchief of Margaret Cole was
employed for a more deadly purpose. In this bullet was a note

in cypher, addressed to Clinton, at New York, describing the actual
condition of Savannah, evidently from the hands of some one
in that quarter. In a few months after this period Savannah was
in possession of the British.

Barnacle Sam was tried for the murder of Hurst before a civil
tribunal, and acquitted on the score of insanity; a plea put in for
him, in his own spite, and greatly to his mortification. He retired
from sight, for a space after this verdict, and remained quiet
until a necessity arose for greater activity on the part of the patriots
at home. It was then that he was found among the partisans, always
bold and fearless, fighting and suffering manfully to the
close of the war.

It happened, on one occasion, that the somewhat celebrated
Judge Burke, of South Carolina, was dining with a pleasant party
at the village of Orangeburg. The judge was an Irish gentleman
of curious humour, and many eccentricities. He had more
wit than genius, and quite as much courage as wisdom. The
bench, indeed, is understood to have been the reward of his military
services during the Revolution, and his bulls in that situation
are even better remembered than his deeds in the other. But his
blunders were redeemed by his humour, and the bar overlooked
his mistakes in the enjoyment of his eccentricities. On the
present occasion the judge was in excellent mood, and his companions
equally happy, if not equally humorous with himself.
The cloth had been removed, and the wine was in lively circulation,
when the servant announced a stranger, who was no other
than Barnacle Sam. Our ancient was known to the judge and
to several of the company. But they knew him rather as the
brave soldier, the successful scout, the trusty spy and courier,
than as the unsuccessful lover and the agent of God's judgment
against the wrong doer. His reception was kind; and the judge,
taking for granted that he came to get a certificate for bounty
lands, or a pension, or his seven years' pay, or something of that
sort, supposed that he should get rid of him by a prompt compliance
with his application. No such thing. He had come to get
a reversal of that judgment of the court by which he had been
pronounced insane. His acquittal was not an object of his concern.
In bringing his present wish to the knowledge of the

judge he had perforce to tell his story. This task we have already
sufficiently performed. It was found that, though by no
means obtrusive or earnest, the good fellow was firm in his application,
and the judge, in one of his best humours, saw no difficulty
in obliging him.

“Be plaised, gentlemen,” said he, “to fill your glasses. Our
revision of the judgment in the case of our excellent friend, Sergeant
Barnacle, shall be no dry joke. Fill your glasses, and be
raisonably ripe for judgment. Sit down, Sergeant Barnacle, sit
down, and be plaised to take a drhap of the crathur, though you
leave no other crathur a drhap. It sames to me, gentlemen of
the jury, that our friend has been hardly dealt with. To be found
guilty of insanity for hanging a tory and a spy—a fellow actually
bearing despatches to the enemy—sames a most extraordinary
judgment; and it is still more extraordinary, let me tell you, that
a person should be suspected of any deficiency of sense who
should lay hands on a successful rival. I think this hanging a
rival out of the way an excellent expadient; and the only mistake
which, it sames to me, our friend Sergeant Barnacle has
made, in this business, was in not having traed him sooner than
he did.”

“I sought him, may it please your honour, but the Lord did not
deliver him into my hands until his hour had come,” was the interruption
of Barnacle Sam.

“Ah! I see! You would have hung him sooner if you could.
Gentlemen of the jury, our friend, the sergeant, has shown that
he would have hung him sooner if he could. The only ground,
then, upon which, it sames to me, that his sanity could have been
suspected, is thus cleared up; and we are made to say that our
worthy friend was not deficient in that sagacity which counsels
us to execute the criminal before he is guilty, under the good old
rule that prevention is better than cure—that it is better to hang
thirty rogues before they are proved so, rayther than to suffer one
good man to come to avil at their hands.”

It is needless to say that the popular court duly concurred with
the judge's humorous reversal of the former decision; and Barnacle
Sam went his way, perfectly satisfied as to the removal of
all stain from his sanity of mind.