University of Virginia Library

20. CHAPTER XX.
OLD GOWDEY.

Of “Oldtown” — “old Charlestown,” the nest-egg of the present
opulent state of South Carolina, there is now scarcely a single
vestige. All is level. Even when visited by our rover Calvert,
it was a place of ruins. The old block-house excepted, hardly a
house remained. What time and neglect had spared, the red men
destroyed. They had applied the torch to all that the white settlers
had abandoned — not much, it is true — and our rover trod
among beds of cinders overgrown with weeds. At the present
day, we have hardly a trace of the locality. The whole space is
occupied by fertile plantations, in which cotton is eloquent in behalf
of civilization; even if civilization, forgetting its wisdom in
its philanthropy, forbears all argument in behalf of cotton. The
future compensates, though it does not restore; and we have no
reason, surveying the present fertility, to deplore the overthrow
of the old experiment. Calvert is not philosopher enough to anticipate
the wondrous future; and may be allowed to feel some
saddening sensations as he passes over the ruined site of the infant
colony. We, too, even at this day, with the virgin blooms of the
cotton in our eyes even as we write, are not wholly superior to
that sentiment which deplores that the nest of the eagle should be
abandoned without some memorial to declare whence she took her
flight! We recall with interest the feeble colony of Sayle, seeking
safer harborage in this seclusion from provoking foes than
Port Royal, where he first sought to plant, could possibly afford.

And here, for several years, the little settlement grew; having
charge of that small nest-egg of a future civilization, which was
finally to develop into a proud and potent state! Here, from this
frail hamlet, we have seen great patriots, and sagacious statemen,
and mighty warriors emerge, doing great things in various seasons,
and rising into noblest heroism in the hour of storm and
danger. And we can not forget, and should not, how this infant
heart beat, in this lone region, with all those pulses of courage,
and self-denial, and faith, and virtue, which men were decreed to
honor in coming times — to love and honor, without once asking
where these beautiful virtues were first cradled for renown!

But the hour passes. Calvert has little time for reflection upon
the vicissitudes of place; and we, who are his biographers, must
not suffer him to go from sight.

He glides through the thicket, he winds about the creek, he
reaches the knoll where the pyre still blazes to guide his course,
behind which looms up the block-house, no longer surrounded by
its guardian pickets. These are all gone. The square fabric, of
hewn and mortised logs, well put together, and crenelled for musketry,
stands alone upon the knoll. Time has begun to work
upon it also, though the hand of man has striven to neutralize the
rapid progress of decay. Were it daylight, you could see where
new timbers have been let in, replacing the rotten; where certain
rents have been patched up with plank; showing human caution
to be still at work.

There still peeps out, as you see, the muzzle of an iron cannon,
which covers the whole range between the fortress and the creek.
Governor Quarry has deemed it politic to set this outpost in some
little order. It serves to admonish the red men in the neighborhood,
and, in the event of their proving troublesome, it will give
due notice to the townspeople of their hostilities. One bellow of
that old six-pounder will rouse the citizens, and make them buckle
on their armor; and though the post be occupied, at present, only
by a single man, he will suffice for the purpose of alarm.

He is an old soldier in Indian warfare — a picked frontier-man,
with a passion for solitude which makes him prefer the encounter,
single-handed, with the savage, rather than lack in the proper
elbow-room which he loves. But he shall tell us all about himself.

There were no signs of life within the log-house as Calvert approached
it. It was, as we have said, a square tower of logs,
some forty feet on every hand. On the side facing the river, at
an elevation of ten feet, the gun, raised upon a platform within,
thrust out its muzzle through a porthole, which looked down upon
the creek. Holes were pierced, on a line parallel with this embrasure,
for the use of musketry. The entrance was upon the south,
overshadowed by a sort of barbacan, from which the garrison
might shoot down upon assailants at the gate below. This gate
was of heavy slabs of oak, plated crosswise with other slabs, and
almost covered with the spikes which were used to bind the two
faces of the door together. The tower, for such we may call it,
was some twenty-four feet high; it was roofed and terraced, a
cement of tar and sand having been employed as a coating.
Within, the building consisted of two stories. In the lower, occupied
by the six-pounder, Gowdey did his cooking on the ground;
never troubling himself as to the escape of the smoke, which found
its way through the porthole, or the crenelling, or slowly floated
into the upper story, which was his sleeping-place. There was
no chimney.

But Calvert had not yet found his way in. All was still as
death as he approached the entrance. Here he drew a silver
whistle from his pocket, and sounded. A voice from the barbacan
called out, immediately after, the single word “Happy!” to
which our rover answered, “Go Lucky!” Then, assured, Gowdey
descended, and the heavy gate of the fortress swung wide to
admit its visiter. It was carefully closed behind him. Uncovering
a dark-lantern, which served only to make the darkness visible,
Gowdey seized with one hand the wrist of Calvert, and conducted
him to the foot of the ladder by which they were to mount to the
upper story. This, when they attained, they found more fully
lighted by another lantern, the rays of which were wholly unseen
from without. A scuttle in the roof, open always in clear weather,
afforded the inmate light and air; for, though apertures had been
pierced around the room for the use of firearms, these had all
been covered — for what reason we know not — with a strip of
planking. This could be easily torn off, and the place restored
wholly to its original purposes.

Our solitary had seemingly few comforts. His bed was spread

upon the floor, a simple mattress. There were boxes about the
room, and kegs, and odds and ends of simple furniture, stools and
benches. A rifle and long ducking-gun, pistols, and a couple of
grains for fishing, with rods, and nets, and lines, and tackle, were
to be seen standing in the corners or suspended from the walls.
There was one great oaken table, upon which stood pewter plates,
knives, forks, and coffee-pot. But we have no need for further
catalogue. Enough that the chamber of Gowdey was not ill furnished
in the eyes of one who had been hunter, fisherman, trapper,
and Indian trader by turns, and who still continued the two former
employments with all the zest of his early manhood.

“You have forgotten me, Gowdey, I suppose,” said Calvert, as
he shook the hand of the garrison.

“Forgit your honor? That 's impossible! Certainly not, when
Franks sends me a jug of Jamaica every now and then, and a trit
of tobacco, and tells me that they come from you.”

“I told him to supply you.”

“And many thanks, your honor. The Jamaica 's a great help
to a vartuous memory; and, with my pipe a-going, it 's won'erful
how much a man's shet eyes kin see, deep down in long-gone seasons.
Lord love you, sir, I do n't think I kin forgit anything, so
long as there 's any Jamaica in my jug and tobacco in my pipe!
Tobacco 's a most blessed, heavenly invintion, your honor, for refreshing
a bad memory. It 's so quieting to the heart, and brings
such sweet, orderly thinking to the head! It 's the next thing,
sir, to a famous sleep, with a dream all the time of being jist where
you wants to be.”

“Well, Gowdey, so long as I can provide it, you shall have
your tobacco and Jamaica. But it 's so long since we had met—”

“Going on three years only,” interposed the other.

“And three years are an eternity in this world of strife and
change.”

“It 's nothing to an old man of seventy.”

“Are you seventy, Gowdey?”

“And one over, your honor.”

“You hardly look more than fifty.”

“No — perhaps! And I have n't the feel of more; and I kin
follow a buck all day, and be spry for a turkey by dawn, jest as
well now as if I was n't quite fifty. And ef 't want for this stiffness

of the arm” — lifting his left — “and that's another sign to
make me remember you —”

“What about your arm, and what had I to do with it, Gowdey?”

“Why, Lord, sir, 't has never been the same arm to me sence
that famous shirk-fight — do n't you remember, sir, in Port-Royal
harbor? Why, sir, your honor, ef I never supped your Jamaica,
and never snuffed your tobacco, that arm is always ready to 'mind
me of that fight, and how you saved me from the jaws of that devouring
sea-divil. I would have been but a mouthful in his jaws,
ef it had n't been for you! And it 's not every man — no, sir,
your honor! not more than one man in a thousand — that would
jump overboard into the deep sea, to help a poor fellow out of
sich a jaw. When I thinks over that time, and how you dived
under the beast, and cut into his lights and liver with your knife,
jist when I was a-gasping and looking for my death every minute,
on my back, and onder his double row of saws, I forgits tobacco
and Jamaica, and thinks of you! I 've got his skin presarved,
there in the corner, as a bit of good luck to fishermen.”

“I remember, now — I remember.”

“I reckon you do! How kin you forgit? That, I say, your
honor, is about the most valiantest thing that ever you did, though
they do cry up your fights with the Spaniards. I hear you licked
a great don out of his breeches, and sunk his ship; but that fight
with the shirk was, to my thinking, the most desperatest thing
that a human mortal ever did do in his sober senses. And you
jumped overboard to do it when not a man stirred a peg; and,
but for you, I was clean gone, for I could do nothing my one self,
and the one gripe of the shoulder that the brute beast give me
was a taste of the etarnity of swallow that he had in that maw of
his'n! I would n't have been more than a morsel in his jaws
after that, ef 't want for you. Oh, I sha' n't forgit it, captain, so
long as I have a feeling of crawling flesh about me!”

“Well, Gowdey, we 'll say no more of that escape, which was
certainly a lucky as it was a narrow one; and I rejoice at my
agency in the matter, as at one of the few good actions of my life.
I prefer, now, that we should talk of other matters, more agreeable
to yourself.”

“Lord love your honor! as ef anything could be more grateful

than getting out of the shirk's mouth, though by the skin of the
teeth.”

“Yes, in one sense, it was certainly most grateful to you, as in
another sense it was to me.”

“In all senses, your honor.”

“But you are on dry land now; and, though I do not see many
signs of prosperity about you, yet I prefer to think of you, and
should like to hear that you are as prosperous on dry land as you
are safe.”

“Well, your honor, that 's soon said. I 'm as prosperous as I
cares to be, and perhaps more so than I desarve. I have enough
and to spare; and that reminds me, your honor, that I 've got a
little cold supper here for you — some pretty fine fish and a can
of Jamaica—”

“Not just yet, Gowdey. Go on with what you were saying.
You have enough—”

“And to spare! And that, I may say, is pretty much all that
a man needs in this world, and perhaps in any other. I get a
trifle of five pounds a year, which keeps me in powder and shot, for
keeping up this old block; and I airn a trifle more by fishing for
the townspeople; and sometimes I pick up a buck or a turkey in
the swamp, or a brace of ducks in the ponds, and that 's all grist
to my mill; and then I do a little job, at times, for Franks and
other people, and they pays me well: and altogether, sir, I 'm as
well fed, and clothed, and liquored, as a single man wants to be
in this country, where the cold do n't bite too keenly, and where
the warm comes to me natural, like the sun to the corn.”

“But you have to work for all this, Gowdey, and pretty hard work
too; and, at your age, my good fellow, the heart, head, and body,
all equally ask for rest and ease.”

“Lord, your honor forgits I passes for only fifty. But work,
sir, is a great sweetener of bread and meat; and to airn one's
money, makes money a more decent and respectable thing than
ef I got it and gave no sweat for it! And so, you see, I do n't
feel the age, and I do n't fear the work; and I find myself so well
as I am, that ef I was to be better off, I 'm afeard I 'd be worse!
I 'd be gitting sick; and, ef anything could scare a poor sinner
like myself, it 's the idee of being sick — to lie on one's back and
to want water, when every j'int in my body would prefer Jamaica;

to swallow doctors' stuff, when the venison-ham, hanging from the
wall, seems to cry, `Come make a steak of me, and be young
agin!' And to think that, maybe, I should git sick with nobody
to give me water, or physic either, and then, Lord knows what!
That's the consideration, your honor, that sometimes pops into
my head, and sets it all over aching with the thinking of what's
to happen.”

“Ay, and sickness will come, Gowdey.”

“When sickness comes to me, your honor, I 'll make up my
bed, and wrap up, and lie down for the last sleep! I sha' n't take
physic, and I kin do without the water for awhile, and no venison-steak
will do me good.”

“Nay, my good fellow, that will be next door to suicide.”

“I do n't think so, your honor. For you see, living the sort of
life I live, there 's nothing but old age to make me sick, and, for
that disease, Death is the only doctor. I 'm an active man, and
does well in the open air; work strengthens me after a good sweat,
and my food is always sweet, and I never over-eat and never over-drink
myself; and what 's to make me sick but old age? I never
was sick an hour in my life, and I 've kept moving always. It 's
this moving always and moving fast, your honor, that keeps a man
hearty. Sickness kaint catch him. It 's your slow people that
the fever catches and the agy shakes; and it only shakes 'em to
show how they ought to shake themselves! That 's my doctrine,
your honor, and, ef it 's true, you see that, when I takes to my
bed, I 'll need no doctoring. Pay-day 's come, and Lord send me
the feeling to believe that I kin square accounts with my eternal
Creditor, and git an honorable discharge from all my debts!”

“Yet, Gowdey, there must be something melancholy in this
solitary way of life. Have you no people — no kindred?”

“Not a living human as I knows on; not a chick nor a child.
Ef I had, your honor, they should be here, and I 'd work the museles
harder, but they should lie on a softer bed than mine. But
I haint got 'em, and I do n't miss 'em. When I was a younger
man, I did; and then I felt how hard it was to be alone. But
I 'm usen to it now. Men who live, like me, all their lives in the
woods, gits out of liking for what you call society. They l'arn to
love woods, and thicks, and trees, and rivers, and lakes; and they
gits a quick ear for the cries of birds and beasts; and they somehow

finds company in very small and sometimes strange matters.
The woods and trees, and even the waters, git to be friends after
awhile; and you talks to them, and you think and believe that
they talks back to you. A cast-away sailor on a desarted island
will git to an acquaintance with every rock and tree that he sees
daily, and l'arn to love 'em, and want no better company. And
so, an old woodman like myself — why, sir, here in this old log-castle,
I 'm a-convarsing all day, at the lookout, with something or
other, and studying the set of a tree, and the shape of a cloud, and
the shades of green in the woods as the sun and winds pass over
'em, so that I make out a sort of argyment for them, and myself
too. But there 's more than that, your honor. There 's the company
of blessed spirits, that are always about us, night and day,
doing something — we do n't know what or how — to help us on,
and keep our hearts up, and make our road easy.”

“Spirits? Did you ever see a spirit?”

“Yes, your honor; I 'm sure of it, though I do n't know for
sartain that one ever did cross my sight. But I 've felt it. I
feels very sure that they keep my company. There 's something
tells me so. It 's in my heart or head; it 's in all my veins; it 's
my holy belief. And sometimes I think I hear voices; and there
are sounds that stir me up till my heart beats like a strong watch;
and my hair rises naturally, without any thinking of mine — without
any warning: so that I know that they are about me.”

“But you have seen nothing?”

“Well, I kaint say yes, your honor, but I kaint say no. I 've
never had a spirit to stand before me, and face me outright; but
I 've felt 'em flash beside me, when I 've been in the deep thick,
jest like a flash of a wing — jest like a bird passing.”

“'T was a bird, no doubt.”

“No, your honor! My gun p'ints naturally at the flash of a
bird's wing, right or left; and you know I 'm an old hunter, and
ought to know what 's a bird and what 's not. There 's not a red-skin
in the woods but will tell you Ben Gowdey knows every bird
that flies. But I hear sounds and I see shapes, when it 's growing
dusk; and at night, in this old log-castle, I kin hear whispers
in the very room, when its deep midnight; and — but, Lord love
your honor, it 's easier to believe than to prove; and ef you were
to ask me all day, I could only tell you that I believe for myself,

but kaint make the thing clear to you. But it stands to reason.
I had a father and a mother, like every other man; and I had
brothers and sisters, but it so happened that I hardly ever know'd
one of 'em; they all died off when I was not knee-high. And I
have reason to believe that they were goodish people enough —
poor, and sinning now and then, as is the natural case with poor
folks, put to it pretty hard by a hard world; but, as the world
goes, I reckon they were goodish people. And the little brothers
and sisters, not six years old, what was to make them bad? Well,
they all naturally feels a feeling to help me on smoothly, and to
make me journey safely; and so, I reckon, they are about me.
And I 'm glad to think so, for it does me good, and keeps me as
good as human flesh will let me be! And I 'm sure it 's they that
flash across my sight; and they whisper in my room; and, I tell
you, I 've had, more than a hundred times, a something whispering
in my ear, `Do n't!' — and sometimes, jest as often, another
whispering that said, `Do!' — and I know it that, jest as I listened
to them voices, I got on smooth and safe, and felt the better for it.”

“I can 't quarrel with your faith, Gowdey, and still less am I
disposed to find fault with your philosophy.”

“Oh! 't aint philosophy, your honor. I 'm not conceited enough
for that. It 's only the reason, and the common sense, and the
natural truth.”

“Perhaps so. Certainly, if such are the fruits of their interference
with you, the spirits deserve this privilege of visit. But,
are you not disturbed by other sounds? Do not the Indians
sometimes rouse you up at midnight?”

“Not they! They 'd feel it in all their bones, and they know
it. They 're mortally afear'd of the six-pounder; and they all
know what a nice rifle-bead I kin draw upon red skin or white,
ef they come too close to the garrison. But they 'd like to do it,
ef they could, and so I 'm good at watch, and knows my time;
and am jest as good a scout in the woods as the best of them.”

“Are any of them in the neighborhood?”

“They 're beginning to come, and some are never gone. Some
of them, the Stonos and the Sewees, live almost altogether on the
salts. The Yamasees keeps a-moving up and down in the winter,
but gits back to the Ashepoo and Pocotaligo, and all along the
salts, in fish-time. All these people a'most belongs to the great

Katahbah nation, and the tribes come and go, according to the
season, from the seacoast to the mountain-country and back agin.
There 's a sort of trade between them. The seashore Injuns carry
up shells, and clay pots and pans, and cane-reeds for arrows, and
gits flintstones for hatchets aud arrow-heads, and war-clubs, from
the up-country people, in the way of barter.”

“Have you seen many this season?”

“Not many. But they 're about, I hear, and coming along
daily. In a month's time or so, the woods will be thick with 'em,
all along the rivers. And I 'm sorry to see it.”

“What! they lessen your chances at the game — thin the
game—”

“It 's not that, your honor; there's a plenty for all of us. But
I 'm afear'd the Injuns are guine to be troublesome agin. They
have not been whipped bad enough yet, and never was there any
people so apt to forget a whipping soon. They were pretty sassy
before they went off last autumn, and, from what I then seed, I
was dubous of what was to come. From what I hear, I reckon
there 'll be some of the mountain-tribes coming down along with
'em this season; and ef they do, we may calculate to hear the
warwhoop somewhere about the settlements this summer. Well,
now you see, jest at this time, when they 're most sassy, comes a
new council, and they 've got the notion in their heads that all these
redskins are a sort of natural Christians that only wants a leetle
sprinkling to become convarts to our religion, and grow into honest,
sober, home-keeping Christians. But water aint going to do
it, your honor — no, nor soap and water, nor all the preaching
from London down to Vera Cruz. It 's whipping, and hard work,
and l'arning how to eat good bread and meat well cooked, and gitting
a taste for vegetables as well as venison: this is the way to
teach a savage how to git religion. The cook-pot is a great convarter
of the heathen — that and the whipping-post.”

“Rather novel doctrines, Gowdey.”

“Oh! I knows the beast, your honor, and kin count every spot
on his hide. These council-men, they knows nothing. Here 's a
new man, a Colonel Berkeley, a nevey of the Lord Berkeley,
they say, and he 's bought ever so much land, jest above us, some
seven or eight miles up; and they 've made him a lord, too — a
`cassique,' they call it, which is Injun for a `lord;' and he 's one

of the council-men; and he says they've been too hard upon the
Injuns; and he 's brought out orders that we 're to captivate and
sell no more of them, but to have treaties with 'em, and trade with
'em, and treat 'em like brothers. And pretty brothers he 'll find
them! He 's having them at his plantation that he 's a-settling,
and he 's feeding them; and he 'll have enough of 'em before he 's
done with 'em. They 'll feed on him all they can, and he 'll never
content 'em so long as he 's got anything left; and when he won't
give any more, they 'll take; and the first fine chance, when they
sees that his barony 's full of good things, they 'll make a midnight
dash at 'em, and he 'll never know his danger till he feels their
fingers in his hair. They 'll raise his scalp for him before they 're
done with him. But you know the varments as well as I do.”

“And has he no notion of all this?”

“No more than a child! I 've talked over the whole thing to
him, and told him what he may expect. But he says it 's all our
fault; that we treated the Injuns badly, and made 'em what they
are; that they 're `Nature's noblemen,' and only need good treatment
to be good fellows and good Christians. He 's sat here with
me by the hour, talking over the matter — and jest, as I may say,
talking like a man in a dream. His head is full of projects.
He 's always at something new. Now he 's for draining all these
swamps — he says they 'll make the best meadows in the world;
then he 's for great cattle-ranges and sheepwalks; and for making
wine out of the grapes, and says he kin supply all England with
wine better than they git from France. Well, the upshot of all
will be, that he 'll break, and go to smash, and the Injuns will take
his scalp and burn his barony. They 'll first begin upon his sheep
and cattle, and he 's got a smart chance of both already from England;
and then they 'll finish with his family. They 'll eat and
burn him up.”

“But does he maintain no watch — no garrison?”

“Yes: he 's got some raw English laborers with him; and the
carpenters are at work, and he 's got his block-houses and we'pons-of-war;
but he do n't know the savages how they work a traverse,
and they 'll all be surprised and cut off. And it 's a mighty sad
thing to think upon, your honor; for this Colonel Berkeley seems
a mighty fine sort of person — honorable, and smart enough, and
full of work; he 's got a hand for a-most anything, and is jest

about as eager at a new beginning as any boy that ever broke
loose out of school. I 'm to git him an Injun lad for a hunter;
and I 've agreed for one, the son of an old chief of the Sewees —
old Mingo, as we call him, but the Injuns call him Cussoboe.
He 's the chief of that tribe. I expect him every day. The colonel
wanted to hire me to do his hunting; but, at my time, your
honor, I won't go into any new contracts. I 'm for paddling my
own canoe.”

“It is to this barony of Colonel Berkeley that I 'm to go to-night,
Gowdey, and you must direct me how to find it.”

“I 'll guide your honor, if you please. It 's easier to do that
than to direct you.”

“Have you a horse?”

“As sleek a marsh tacky as you ever crossed.”

“Franks sent you a horse for me?”

“He 's here and safe — hid and hoppled in the thick, alongside
of my own.”

“Well, Gowdey, I shall be glad to have your guidance. How
long will it take us to get there?”

“A short two hours.”

“Then, if we start three hours before day, it will answer. Now,
understand me. This is a secret expedition. I am not going to
see Colonel Berkeley, and do not wish to be seen by him or any
of his people. I wish to hover about for awhile, concealed closely,
seeing everything if possible, myself unseen. He is, you are
aware, a member of the privy council, and exercises a large influence
upon the deliberations of that body. I need not tell you
that I am compelled to keep dark.”

“Yes, I 've heard! — that bloody fight with the Spanish don!
Well, for my part, I only wish you had sunk a hundred of 'em.
Those bloody Spaniards are the natural enemies of all true Englishmen;
and the king and lords-proprietors do n't know what
mischief they 're a-doing, when they tie up the hands of our valiant
cruisers. But they hain't ruled you out of law altogether,
captain.”

“You may earn five hundred pounds, Gowdey, by showing to
the governor, or this Colonel Berkeley, where to lay hands upon
me!”

“And I 'd airn hell and damnation along with the money, your

honor! Surely, sir, your honor believes in the honor of Ben
Gowdey?”

“As in my own — and thus it is that you see me here to-night.”

“God bless you, sir,” grasping and squeezing his guest's hand,
“and your visits and honor to this poor old hunter! We must
drink together on that, your honor; and now for that bite of
supper!”