University of Virginia Library

6. CHAPTER VI.

Night had fairly set in—a clear starlight night—
before the three set forth upon their proposed adventure.
To Major Singleton, who was a native of the
middle country, and had lived heretofore almost exclusively
in it, the path they now travelled was entirely
unknown. It was necessary, therefore, to move on
slowly and with due circumspection. But for this, the
party would have advanced with as much speed as if
they were pursuing the common highway; for, to the
other two, accustomed all their lives to the woodland
cover and the tangled recesses of the swamps, their
present route, uncleared, in close thicket growth, and
diverging as it continually did, was, nevertheless, no
mystery. Though delayed, however, by this cause, the
delay was much less than might have been expected;
for Singleton, however ignorant of the immediate
ground over which they sped, was yet thoroughly
versed in forest life, and had traversed the longer and
denser swamps of the Santee, a task, though similar,
infinitely more difficult and extensive than the one now
before him. After a little while, therefore, when his
eye grew more accustomed to the peculiar shades
about him, he spurred his good steed forward with
much more readiness than at their first setting out, and
it was not long before the yielding of the soil beneath
his hoofs and the occasional plash of the water, together

with the more frequent appearance of the solemn
and ghostly cypresses around them, gave sufficient indication
of the proximity of the swamp.

They had ridden some five miles, and in all this
time no word had been spoken by either of the three,
except when, here and there, an increased difficulty in
the path led Humphries to the utterance of some caution
to his companions. They were now close upon
the cypress causeway, and the swamp was gathering
around them. Their pace grew slower and more fatiguing,
for the freshet had swept the temporary structure
over which they rode, and many of the rails were
floating in their path. Little gaps were continually
presenting themselves, many of which they saw not,
but which, fortunately for their safety, were generally
avoided by the horses without any call for interference
on the part of their riders. Stumbling sometimes,
however, they were warned not to press their
animals; and picking their way with as much care as
possible, they went on in single file, carefully and
slowly, over the narrow and broken embankment. It
was at this part of their progress that Humphries broke
out more freely into speech than he had done before,
for his usual characteristic was that of taciturnity.

“Now, I do hate these dams and causeways; our
people know nothing of road-making, and they ridge
and bridge it, while our bones ache and our legs go
through at every step we take in going over them. Yet
they won't learn—they won't look or listen. They do
as they have done a hundred years before, and all your
teaching is of no manner of use. Here is this causeway
now—every freshet must break its banks and tear
up the poles, yet they come back a week after, and
lay them down just as before. They never ask if
there's a way to build it, which is to make it lasting.
They never think of such a thing. Their fathers did
so a hundred years ago, and that's reason enough why
they should do so now.”

“And what plan have you, Humphries, by which to
make the dam solid and strong against the freshets,

such as we have, that sweep every thing before them,
and sometimes give us half a dozen feet of water for a
week, over a road that we have been accustomed to
walk dryshod?”

“To be sure there is a way, major, and with far
less labour. There's no use in building a road unless
you give it a backbone. You must run a ridge through
it, and all the freshets make it stronger, for they wash
the refuse and the mud up against it, instead of washing
it away. You see all good roads rise in the centre.
The waters run off and never settle, which they always
do in the hollows between these poles. You fell your
tree, always a good big one, to make your ridge—your
backbone; and if it be a causeway like this, running
through a swamp, that you would build, why, you fell
your dozen trees, or more, according to the freshet's
call for them. You lay them side by side, not across,
but up and down the road, taking care to put the big
ones in the centre. So you may run it for miles,
heaping the earth up to the logs. A road made after
that fashion will stand a thousand years, while such a
thing as this must always be washing away with every
freshet. It takes, in the first place, you see, a great
deal more of labour and time, and a great deal more
of timber, to build it after this fashion; then, it takes
more dirt to cover the rails—a hundred times the quantity—and
unless they're well covered, they can't be
kept down; they will always come loose, and be floating
with every rain, and then the water settles heavily
in their places and between them. This can't be the
case where you lay the timber up and down, as I tell
you. It must stand fast; for the rain can't settle, and
the earth gathers close to the ridge, and hugs it tighter
the more the water beats on it. Besides, building it
this way, you use heavy timber, which the waters can't
move at any season. But here we stop; we have no
farther use for the causeway to-night; there's our
mark. See to that white tree there; it's a blasted pine,
and it shines in a dark night as if it was painted. The
lightning peeled it from top to toe. It's a'most two

years since. I was not far off in the swamp, catching
terapins, when it was struck, and I was stupified for
an hour after, and my head had a ringing in it I didn't
get rid of for a month.”

“What, do we go aside here?” inquired Davis, who
did not seem to relish the diversion, as the first plunge
they were required to make from the broken causeway
was into a turbid pond, black, and almost covered with
fragments of decayed timber and loose bundles of
brush.

“Yes, that's our path,” replied Humphries, who resolutely
put his horse forward as he spoke.

“This is about one of the worst places, major, that
we shall have to go through, and we take it on purpose,
so that we may not be tracked so easily. Here, when
we leave the causeway, we make no mark, and few
people think to look for us in the worst place on the
line. No, indeed; most people have a love to make
hard things easy, though they ought to know that when
a man wants to hide, he takes a hole, and not a highway,
to do it in. Here, major, this way—to your left,
Davis—through the bog.”

The party followed as their guide directed, and after
some twenty minutes' plunging, they were deep in the
shadow and the shelter of the swamp. The gloom
was thicker around them, and was only relieved by the
pale and skeleton forms of the cypresses, clustering in
groups along the plashy sides of the still lake, and
giving meet dwelling-places to the screech-owl, that
hooted at intervals from their rugged branches. Sometimes
a phosphorescent gleam played over the stagnant
pond, into which the terapin plunged heavily at their
approach; while on the neighbouring banks the frogs of
all degrees croaked forth their inharmonious chant,
making the scene more hideous, and certainly adding
greatly to the sense of gloom which it inspired in those
who penetrated it. A thousand other sounds filled up
the pauses between the conclusion of one and the
commencement of another discordant chorus from these
admitted croakers—sounds of alarm, of invitation, of

exulting tyranny—the cry of the little bird, when the
black-snake, hugging the high tree, climbs up to the
nest of her young, while, with shrieks of rage, flapping
his roused wings, the mate flies furiously at his head,
and gallantly enough, though vainly, endeavours to
drive him back from his unholy purpose—the hum
of the drowsy beetle, the faint chirp of the cricket, and
the buzz of the innumerable thousands of bee, bird, and
insect, which make the swamps of the South, in midsummer
and its commencement, the vast storehouse, in
all its forms, of the most various and animated life—
all these were around the adventurers, with their gloomy
and distracting noises, until they became utterly unheeded
at last, and the party boldly kept its onward
course into their yet deeper recesses.

“Well, Humphries,” said Major Singleton, at length
breaking the silence, “so far, so good; and now what
is our farther progress, and what the chances for trapping
this Travis? Will he not steal a march upon us,
and be into the swamp before daylight?”

“Never fear it, major,” replied the other, coolly
enough, while keeping on his way. “You remember,
sir, what Huck gave us of his plan. He will place
himself upon the skirts of the swamp, high above the
point at which we struck, and keep quiet till morning.
He will be up betimes, and all that we must do is to be
up before him. We have a long ride for it, as it is one
part of our work to stop him before he gets too far
into the brush. I know his course just as if I saw him
on it.”

“Yes; such indeed may have been the plan; but is
there no chance of his departing from it? A good
leader will not hold himself bound to a prescribed
course, if he finds a better. He may push for the
swamp to-night, and I am very anxious that we should
be in time to strike him efficiently.”

“We shall, sir,” replied the other, calmly; “we
shall have sufficient time, for I know Travis of old.
He is a good hound for scent, but a poor one for chase.
He goes slow to be certain, and is always certain to

be slow. It's nature with him now, though quick
enough, they say, some twenty years ago, when he
went out after the Cherokees. Besides, he has a long
sweep to make before he gets fairly into the swamps,
and the freshet we have had lately will throw him out
often enough, and make his way longer. We shall be
in time.”

“I am glad you are so sure of your man, Humphries.
I would not like to lose a good chance at the party. A
successful blow struck in this quarter, and just at this
moment, would have a fine effect. Why, man, it would
bring out those fellows handsomely, whose ears are
now full of this protection business, which troubles
them so much. If they must fight, they will see the
wisdom of taking part with the side which does not
call upon them to strike friends or brethren. They
must join with us to a man, or go to the West Indies,
and that, no doubt, some of the dastards will not fail
to do in preference. God help me, but I can scarce
keep from cursing them, as I think on their degradation.”

“Bad enough, major, bad enough when it's the poor
man, without house and home, and nothing to live for
and nothing to lose, who takes up with the enemy and
fights his battles; but it's much worse when the rich
men and the gentlemen, who ought to know better, and
to set a good example, it's much worse when they're
the first to do so. Now I know and I feel, though I
expect you won't be so willing to believe it, that, after
all, it's the poor man who is the best friend of his country
in the time of danger. He doesn't reckon how
much he's to lose, or what risk he's to run, when there's
a sudden difficulty to get through with. He doesn't
think till it's all over, and then he may ask how much
he gains by it, without getting a civil answer.”

“There's truth in what you say, Humphries, and we
do the poor but slack justice in our estimation of them.
We see only their poverty, and not their feelings and
affections; we have, therefore, but little sympathy,

and perhaps nothing more than life and like wants in
common with them.”

“That's a God's truth here, major, where the poor
man does the fighting and the labour, and the rich
man takes protection to save his house from the fire.
Now, its just so with this poor man Frampton. He
was one of Buford's men, and when Tarleton came
upon them, cutting them up root and branch, he took
to the swamp, and wouldn't come in, all his neighbours
could do, because the man had a good principle for
his country. Well, you see what he's lost;—you
can't know his sufferings till you see him, major,
and I won't try to teach you; but if there's a man can
look on him and see his misery, and know what did
it, without taking up sword and rifle, I don't want to
know that man. I know one that's of a different way
of thinking, and willing to do both.”

“And I another!” exclaimed Davis, who had been
silent in their ride hitherto.

“Is Frampton here in the swamp—and shall we see
him to-night?” asked Singleton, curious to behold a
man who, coming from the poorest class of farmers
in the neighbourhood, had maintained such a tenacious
spirit of resistance to invasion, when the more leading
people around him, and indeed the greater majority,
had subscribed to terms of indulgence, which, if less
honourable, were here far more safe. The sufferings
of the man himself, the cruel treatment his wife had
undergone, and her subsequent death, also contributed
largely to that interest which, upon hearing his simple
but pathetic story, the speaker had immediately felt to
know him.

“We shall see him in an hour, major, and a melancholy
sight it is; you'll be surprised, and if you aint very
strong of heart, it will go nigh to sicken you. But it
does good to see it for one's self; it makes one strong
against tyranny.”

“It grows very dark here.”

“That's water before you, and a good big pond too,”
said Davis.

“This is the track, major;” and Humphries led the
way to the left, inclining more in the direction of the
river. A sullen, child-like cry, succeeded by a sudden
plunge into the water, indicated the vicinity of an
alligator, which they had disturbed in his own home;
the rich globules of light, showering over the water
around him, giving a singular beauty to the scene, in
every other respect so dark and gloomy. They kept
continually turning in a zigzag fashion almost at every
step, to avoid the waving vine, the close thicket, or the
half-stagnant creek, crowded with the decayed fragments
of an older and an overthrown forest.

A shrill whistle at this moment, thrice repeated, saluted
their ears. It was caught up in the distance by
another, and another, in a voice so like, that they might
almost have passed for so many echoes of the same.

“Our sentries watch closely, major; we must answer
them, or we may sup on cold lead,” said Humphries.
As he spoke, he responded to the signal,
and his answer was immediately followed by the appearance
of a figure emerging from behind a tree that
bulged out a little to the left of the tussock upon which
they were now standing. The dim outline only, and
no feature of the new-comer, was distinguishable by
the group.

“Ha! Warner, you watch?—all's well; and now
lead the way. Are all the boys in camp?”

“All!” was the reply; “and a few more come in from
Buford's corps who know Frampton.”

“And how is he?—does he know them?”

“He's in a bad fix, and knows nothing. You can
hardly get a word out of him since his wife's come.”

“His wife! Why, man, what do you think of?—his
wife's dead!” exclaimed Humphries with surprise.

“Yes—we know that; but he brought her, all the
same as if she was alive, on his shoulders, and he
won't give her up. There he sits, close alongside of
her, watching her all the time, and brushing the flies
from her face. He don't seem to mind that she's
dead.”

“Great God!” exclaimed Singleton, “the unhappy
man is mad. Let us push on, and see what can be
done.”

Without a word farther, following their new guide,
Warner, they advanced upon their way, until the blaze
of a huge fire, bursting as it were out of the very
bosom of the darkness, rose wavingly before them.
The camp of the outlawed whigs, or rebels, as they
were styled by the enemy, lonely and unattractive, on
a little island of the swamp, in a few moments after
rose fully in their sight; and plunging into the creek
that surrounded it, though swimming at that moment,
a bound or two carried them safely over, and they stood
in the presence of their comrades.