University of Virginia Library

20. CHAPTER XX.

The next day dawned upon us fair and light.
The better to disarm suspicion, I spent the morning
in company with Mowbray, and in exercise
on horseback. I dined at the cottage,—Bud
Halsey looking in just before my arrival, and
asking where I was. I met him when leaving
Mowbray, after our morning's ride. He gave
me a smile of peculiar significance, but said nothing.
I remembered this smile afterwards, when
it became a question with me whether I had ever,
for a single moment, succeeded in deceiving this
keen-sighted and suspicious outlaw. Our dinner
passed in silence. I had no appetite. Helen's
eyes were tearful. Bush Halsey was in better
spirits, though his mood seldom rose above that
evening serene which had always marked his
calm, benevolent disposition. Dinner was scarcely
over before Helen prepared to take her departure.
She was to seek the island by a route at
once unpleasant and circuitous. It was necessary
that we should not all be seen on the same route.
That which I was to take, was assigned me, as
the easiest to be found by one so much a stranger
as myself to the intricacies of the Swamp. We
parted with many tears, as if we were never to
meet again;—but she was firm, though she wept.

When she was gone, the old man and myself
went once more through our calculations. Every
step we were to take was to be precisely understood
by both. This done, I rode to Mowbray's.
I had two objects in this visit. I wished, in the
first place, to be seen up to the latest moment
preceding my flight; and I was also desirous of
securing the pistols with which I had been practising.
It seemed to be reasonable enough that,
on the eve of starting on a perilous expedition, I
should demand the weapons which a stubborn
cashier might render necessary. Nothing of
moment transpired during this visit. The Swamp
was everywhere astir. Steeds stood here and
there, saddled beneath the tree, waiting the rider
and the word; and there was an air of general
preparation over the encampment, which was
equally picturesque and pleasing. I got the pistols
without difficulty, and, hallooing to me on leaving
him, Mowbray reminded me to be in readiness
at dark. I did not need his warning. I was
very soon ready for the worst. Evening seemed
very slow of approach, and when twilight had
fallen, which it did at that season, and in that
situation, in an instant, I still felt that there was
quite too much light. But I dismissed my nervous
doubts and made ready. The old grey cloak,
the slouch cap, the white cotton neck handkerchief,
were soon huddled on, and, with my pistols
in my bosom, and a good, stout, silver-headed
hickory in my grasp, I went forth, as a hale, heavy
man of fifty, with just a slight stiffness in my
lower limbs. Fortune favored me. I reached
the canoe in safety, and found poor Helen half
dead with apprehension. My coming filled her
equally with tears and strength. She grasped
the paddle with as much dexterity as an Indian
maiden would have done, and as much grace as
a princess. Slight and beautiful, she was yet a
creature of great resolve, when the moment came
of great necessity. This is a striking characteristic
of our Southern women, as known from the
earliest pages of our history. Delicate and feeble
as it would seem in make, languid and luxurious
in disposition, they will yet, when aroused by
the pressure of extreme events, sudden danger,
and painful necessities, meet the crisis with the
souls of men—with souls, in some respects, very
far superior, indeed, to those of the most heroic
men. Men struggle with the consciousness of
strength, but the struggles of women are undertaken
with an opposite conviction. It is with a
full knowledge of their weakness that they come
to the encounter with those evils, to meet which
seems to demand the utmost exercise of strength.

On we went! Our paddles were scarcely
needed. We swept down with the current as
fast as we desired, probably at the rate of four
miles an hour. The stars gave us abundant light.
The silence of night was upon us—how solemnly.
Not a whisper broke from our lips, but, shifting
with the stream, and only plying the paddle to

keep us from the banks, our little boat went onward
like a spiritual thing, hardly making a
ripple on the bosom of the water. Thus we
wound, to and fro, in and out, in a progress that,
however rapid, did not, in half an hour, carry us
far from our starting place. Such was the
circuitousness of the creek. At length, Helen
broke the silence with a whisper. Bending forward,
she said:—

“Here, Henry,—this is Fawn's Point, where
father said we must stop. The cove is on the
other side, where we are to wait for him.”

Our paddles dipped simultaneously, and, slightly
changing her direction, the canoe rounded into
as beautiful a little cove, as ever harbored the
shallop of a Choctaw princess. We run her up
beneath some clustering bays, and, without making
fast, we waited in silence for the signal of Bush
Halsey. I never passed a more tedious two
hours in my life. More than once I proposed to
Helen to proceed.

“Your father is safe,” I said,—“he has nothing
to fear. It is probable he finds it impossible to
reach us. We can get on without him.”

She objected, insisting that, as I knew nothing
of the route, I must lose my way, and probably
fall again into the meshes of the confederacy.
There was reason in the objection. To fall
again into their hands, after an effort to escape,
would have been certain death. But delay was
dreadfully oppressive. We were not able to converse

for fear of alarming some unfriendly ears.
We could not move about for fear of disturbing
some unfriendly watch, but, crouching in the dark,
we lay cramped up in our little dug-out, in a
situation of constraint and impatience that would
have been utterly intolerable, except that Helen
was lying in my arms. More than once, while
in this situation, we heard noises, or fancied them.
The bushes would stir, possibly as some wild
beast pushed through them, some bear or deer—
the dried leaves would crackle as beneath the
crushing tread of some slow, heavy person or
animal; and my keen, and, just now, suspicious
ears, caught up sounds that I could scarcely satisfy
myself, or Helen, did not fall from the lips of
some whispering watcher.

At length we heard a distinct alarm throughout
the Swamp. It must be remembered, though
we had taken so long a time in reaching it, that
we were then only about half a mile, by an air
line, from our little cottage settlement. A bugle
was thrice heard to sound,—followed by the cry
of a dozen beagles, faintly swelling upon the
breeze, or struggling into echoes from every quarter.

“The alarm!” said Helen, starting from my
embrace. “They are on the chase. The beagles
are in cry.”

“Shall I not put off now?” I demanded.

“No! O no! We are in the dark here. Let
us wait.”

The sounds died away, and half an hour more
elapsed, without any other alarm, except in a
single instance, when, it seemed to us, as if a
beagle gave tongue not two hundred yards from
us, seemingly just on the other side of the creek.
At length a faint rustle was heard,—not more
distinct than had reached us before; and,
when we least expected him, Bush Halsey stole
through the copse under the shadow of which we
lay. Pushing off as he stepped into our little
vessel, he whispered:

“We are pursued, closely I fear, and possibly
watched. I expected to have been overtaken.
Why I have not been, I know not. They were
ahead of me at one time, and Bud Halsey himself
upon the trail.”

The words struck me with instant apprehension.
His own approach had been made with so
little noise, and I had heard quite as much before
his coming, that I began to be filled with surmises
and misgivings. But not a word was said.
In another moment we were out of the cove, and
began to feel the full power of the current. Suddenly
a voice hailed us from the point of land to
which we were nearing.

“Boat!”

A thunderbolt would not have more astounded
us, falling at our feet in the calm of a winter day.

“Boat!” the cry was repeated from the very
island we had left. “Pull in or we fire!” We now
understood the whole. The pursuers had scattered
themselves along the head lands. Having an

intimate knowledge of the route, they had reached
the several points before Bush Halsey, who
had been greatly delayed in his progress to join
us by the active interference of his brother;—and
that brother was on our heels! We had every
thing to fear. Again the summons, and the distinct
clicking of the gun-lock was significant of
the coolest determination. Bush Halsey reached
forward and pulled Helen down in the boat towards
him. I was on the forward seat. Not a
word was spoken, and our paddles dipped the
water simultaneously and with the strength of
sinews branced to their utmost tension by the necessity
and danger. A voice, stern, keen, superior
struck our ears—a voice that we too well
knew.

“Bush Halsey, be not a fool! You cannot
pass, and by God! if you try it we shoot. I
mean it. You know me! The treachery of my
own brother is his death.”

We were visible enough, not as individuals, but
as a whole. The boat, like some dark animal,
was gliding through the water. We were rapidly
passing our enemies. Bush Halsey whispered
me;—

“But a few yards will save us. That point,
if we round it, will give us shelter. A stout pull,
—now!”

A shot whistled before me—perhaps, meant as
a warning,—an exhortation to provoke no farther
the wrath of him by whom we were threatened.
At the sound, Helen started up in terror, and

stretched her hands towards me, and, simultaneously
with this movement, we received a volley.
I felt a slight pricking sensation in my left
arm, but forgot it all, as a half-suppressed scream
from Helen betrayed either her apprehensions or
her hurt. We rounded the point at the same instant,
and were thus safe for the moment from
our enemies. I turned to Helen, who lay, as before,
backward, in the arms of her father.

“Helen!” I said, with a tear, which I could
not subdue. “Helen!”

She answered with a moan.

“Helen!” said the father, huskily, as he listened.
“Helen, my child, you are not hurt.”

“I am,—father—Henry.”

“God!—it is not—cannot be true.”

She sank the next instant, with limbs relaxed
and nerveless, down into the bottom of the boat.
Bush Halsey and myself turned to her at the
same moment. She had swooned—we sprinkled
her with water, but we could do nothing for her
where we were. While we busied ourselves
about her, the boat grounded. We lay on a
muddy ledge, which skirted an island thickly set
with fresh trees.

“It is well, Henry. We can take her ashore
here. I know the place. I think we are safe.”

We landed in silence, the old man persisting
in bearing Helen on his own shoulder to the shore.
She had come out of her swoon, and now and
then she moaned, and strove to speak.