University of Virginia Library

1. CHAPTER I.
LIFE IN THE SWAMPS.

Our readers will perhaps feel an interest to turn back
with us, and follow the singular wanderings of the mysterious
personage, whose wild denunciations had so disturbed
the minds of the worshippers at the camp-meeting.

There is a twilight-ground between the boundaries of the
sane and insane, which the old Greeks and Romans regarded
with a peculiar veneration. They held a person whose faculties
were thus darkened as walking under the awful
shadow of a supernatural presence; and, as the mysterious
secrets of the stars only become visible in the night, so in
these eclipses of the more material faculties they held there
was often an awakening of supernatural perceptions.

The hot and positive light of our modern materialism,
which exhales from the growth of our existence every dew-drop,
which searches out and dries every rivulet of romance,
which sends an unsparing beam into every cool
grotto of poetic possibility, withering the moss, and turning
the dropping cave to a dusty den — this spirit, so remorseless,
allows us no such indefinite land. There are but two
words in the whole department of modern anthropology —
the sane and the insane; the latter dismissed from human
reckoning almost with contempt. We should find it difficult
to give a suitable name to the strange and abnormal
condition in which this singular being, of whom we are
speaking, passed the most of his time.

It was a state of exaltation and trance, which yet appeared
not at all to impede the exercise of his outward and

physical faculties, but rather to give them a preternatural
keenness and intensity, such as sometimes attends the more
completely-developed phenomena of somnambulism.

In regard to his physical system there was also much
that was peculiar. Our readers may imagine a human body
of the largest and keenest vitality, to grow up so completely
under the nursing influences of nature, that it may
seem to be as perfectly en rapport with them as a tree; so
that the rain, the wind, and the thunder, all those forces
from which human beings generally seek shelter, seem to
hold with it a kind of fellowship, and to be familiar companions
of existence.

Such was the case with Dred. So completely had he
come into sympathy and communion with nature, and with
those forms of it which more particularly surrounded him
in the swamps, that he moved about among them with as
much ease as a lady treads her Turkey carpet. What would
seem to us in recital to be incredible hardship, was to him
but an ordinary condition of existence. To walk knee-deep
in the spongy soil of the swamp, to force his way through
thickets, to lie all night sinking in the porous soil, or to
crouch, like the alligator, among reeds and rushes, were to
him situations of as much comfort as well-curtained beds
and pillows are to us.

It is not to be denied, that there is in this savage perfection
of the natural organs a keen and almost fierce delight,
which must excel the softest seductions of luxury. Anybody
who has ever watched the eager zest with which the
hunting-dog plunges through the woods, darts through the
thicket, or dives into water, in an ecstasy of enjoyment, sees
something of what such vital force must be.

Dred was under the inspiring belief that he was the subject
of visions and supernatural communications. The
African race are said by mesmerists to possess, in the fullest
degree, that peculiar temperament which fits them for
the evolution of mesmeric phenomena; and hence the existence
among them, to this day, of men and women who are

supposed to have peculiar magical powers. The grandfather
of Dred, on his mother's side, had been one of these
reputed African sorcerers; and he had early discovered in
the boy this peculiar species of temperament. He had
taught him the secret of snake-charming, and had possessed
his mind from childhood with expectations of prophetic and
supernatural impulses. That mysterious and singular gift,
whatever it may be, which Highland seers denominate second
sight, is a very common tradition among the negroes;
and there are not wanting thousands of reputed instances
among them to confirm belief in it. What this faculty may
be, we shall not pretend to say. Whether there be in the
soul a yet undeveloped attribute, which is to be to the
future what memory is to the past, or whether in some individuals
an extremely high and perfect condition of the
sensuous organization endows them with something of that
certainty of instinctive discrimination which belongs to animals,
are things which we shall not venture to decide upon.

It was, however, an absolute fact with regard to Dred,
that he had often escaped danger by means of a peculiarity
of this kind. He had been warned from particular places
where the hunters had lain in wait for him; had foreseen in
times of want where game might be ensnared, and received
intimations where persons were to be found in whom he
might safely confide; and his predictions with regard to
persons and things had often chanced to be so strikingly
true, as to invest his sayings with a singular awe and
importance among his associates.

It was a remarkable fact, but one not peculiar to this case
alone, that the mysterious exaltation of mind in this individual
seemed to run parallel with the current of shrewd,
practical sense; and, like a man who converses alternately
in two languages, he would speak now the language of exaltation,
and now that of common life, interchangeably.
This peculiarity imparted a singular and grotesque effect to
his whole personality.

On the night of the camp-meeting, he was, as we have

already seen, in a state of the highest ecstasy. The wanton
murder of his associate seemed to flood his soul with an
awful tide of emotion, as a thunder-cloud is filled and
shaken by slow-gathering electricity. And, although the
distance from his retreat to the camp-ground was nearly
fifteen miles, most of it through what seemed to be impassable
swamps, yet he performed it with as little consciousness
of fatigue as if he had been a spirit. Even had he
been perceived at that time, it is probable that he could
no more have been taken, or bound, than the demoniac of
Gadara.

After he parted from Harry, he pursued his way to the
interior of the swamp, as was his usual habit, repeating to
himself, in a chanting voice, such words of prophetic writ
as were familiar to him.

The day had been sultry, and it was now an hour or two
past midnight, when a thunder-storm, which had long been
gathering and muttering in the distant sky, began to
develop its forces.

A low, shivering sigh crept through the woods, and
swayed in weird whistlings the tops of the pines; and sharp
arrows of lightning came glittering down among the darkness
of the branches, as if sent from the bow of some warlike
angel. An army of heavy clouds swept in a moment across
the moon; then came a broad, dazzling, blinding sheet of
flame, concentrating itself on the top of a tall pine near
where Dred was standing, and in a moment shivered all its
branches to the ground, as a child strips the leaves from a
twig. Dred clapped his hands with a fierce delight; and,
while the rain and wind were howling and hissing around
him, he shouted aloud:

“Wake, O, arm of the Lord! Awake, put on thy
strength! The voice of the Lord breaketh the cedars — yea,
the cedars of Lebanon! The voice of the Lord divideth
the flames of fire! The voice of the Lord shaketh the wilderness
of Kadesh! Hail-stones and coals of fire!”

The storm, which howled around him, bent the forest like

a reed, and large trees, uprooted from the spongy and tremulous
soil, fell crashing with a tremendous noise; but, as if
he had been a dark spirit of the tempest, he shouted and
exulted.

The perception of such awful power seemed to animate
him, and yet to excite in his soul an impatience that He
whose power was so infinite did not awake to judgment.

“Rend the heavens,” he cried, “and come down!
Avenge the innocent blood! Cast forth thine arrows,
and slay them! Shoot out thy lightnings, and destroy
them!”

His soul seemed to kindle with almost a fierce impatience,
at the toleration of that Almighty Being, who, having
the power to blast and to burn, so silently endures.
Could Dred have possessed himself of those lightnings,
what would have stood before him? But his cry, like the
cry of thousands, only went up to stand in waiting till an
awful coming day!

Gradually the storm passed by; the big drops dashed less
and less frequently; a softer breeze passed through the
forest, with a patter like the clapping of a thousand little
wings; and the moon occasionally looked over the silvery
battlements of the great clouds.

As Dred was starting to go forward, one of these clear
revealings showed him the cowering form of a man, crouched
at the root of a tree, a few paces in front of him. He was
evidently a fugitive, and, in fact, was the one of whose escape
to the swamps the Georgia trader had complained on
the day of the meeting.

“Who is here, at this time of night?” said Dred, coming
up to him.

“I have lost my way,” said the other. “I don't know
where I am!”

“A runaway?” inquired Dred.

“Don't betray me!” said the other, apprehensively.

“Betray you! Would I do that?” said Dred. “How
did you get into the swamp?”

`I got away from a soul-driver's camp, that was taking
us on through the states.”

“O, O!” said Dred. “Camp-meeting and driver's
camp right alongside of each other! Shepherds that sell
the flock, and pick the bones! Well, come, old man; I 'll
take you home with me.”

“I 'm pretty much beat out,” said the man. “It 's been
up over my knees every step; and I did n't know but
they 'd set the dogs after me. If they do, I 'll let 'em kill
me, and done with it, for I 'm 'bout ready to have it over
with. I got free once, and got clear up to New York,
and got me a little bit of a house, and a wife and two children,
with a little money beforehand; and then they nabbed
me, and sent me back again, and mas'r sold me to the drivers,
— and I believe I 's 'bout as good 's die. There 's no
use in trying to live — everything going again a body so!”

“Die! No, indeed, you won't,” said Dred; “not if I 've
got hold of you! Take heart, man, take heart! Before
morning I 'll put you where the dogs can't find you, nor
anything else. Come, up with you!”

The man rose up, and made an effort to follow; but,
wearied, and unused as he was to the choked and perplexed
way, he stumbled and fell almost every minute.

“How now, brother?” said Dred. “This won't do! I
must put you over my shoulder as I have many a buck before
now!” And, suiting the action to the word, he put the
man on his back, and, bidding him hold fast to him, went
on, picking his way as if he scarcely perceived his weight.

It was now between two and three o'clock, and the clouds,
gradually dispersing, allowed the full light of the moon to
slide down here and there through the wet and shivering
foliage. No sound was heard, save the humming of insects
and the crackling plunges by which Dred made his way forward.

“You must be pretty strong!” said his companion.
“Have you been in the swamps long?”

“Yes,” said the other, “I have been a wild man — every

man's hand against me — a companion of the dragons and
the owls, this many a year. I have made my bed with the
leviathan, among the reeds and the rushes. I have found
the alligators and the snakes better neighbors than Christians.
They let those alone that let them alone; but Christians
will hunt for the precious life.”

After about an hour of steady travelling, Dred arrived
at the outskirts of the island which we have described.
For about twenty paces before he reached it, he waded
waist-deep in water. Creeping out, at last, and telling the
other one to follow him, he began carefully coursing along
on his hands and knees, giving, at the same time, a long,
shrill, peculiar whistle. It was responded to by a similar
sound, which seemed to proceed through the bushes. After
a while, a crackling noise was heard, as of some animal,
which gradually seemed to come nearer and nearer to them,
till finally a large water-dog emerged from the underbrush,
and began testifying his joy at the arrival of the new comer,
by most extravagant gambols.

“So, ho! Buck! quiet, my boy!” said Dred. “Show
us the way in!”

The dog, as if understanding the words, immediately
turned into the thicket, and Dred and his companion followed
him, on their hands and knees. The path wound up
and down the brushwood, through many sharp turnings, till
at last it ceased altogether, at the roots of a tree; and,
while the dog disappeared among the brushwood, Dred
climbed the tree, and directed his companion to follow him,
and, proceeding out on to one of the longest limbs, he sprang
nimbly on to the ground in the cleared space which we have
before described.

His wife was standing waiting for him, and threw herself
upon him with a cry of joy.

“O, you 've come back! I thought, sure enough, dey 'd
got you dis time!”

“Not yet! I must continue till the opening of the seals
— till the vision cometh! Have ye buried him?”

“No; there 's a grave dug down yonder, and he 's been
carried there.”

“Come, then!” said Dred.

At a distant part of the clearing was a blasted cedar-tree,
all whose natural foliage had perished. But it was veiled
from head to foot in long wreaths of the tillandsia, the parasitic
moss of these regions, and, in the dim light of the
approaching dawn, might have formed no unapt resemblance
to a gigantic spectre dressed in mourning weeds.

Beneath this tree Dred had interred, from time to time,
the bodies of fugitives which he found dead in the swamps,
attaching to this disposition of them some peculiar superstitious
idea.

The widow of the dead, the wife of Dred, and the new
comer, were now gathered around the shallow grave; for the
soil was such as scarcely gave room to make a place deep
enough for a grave without its becoming filled with water.

The dawn was just commencing a dim foreshadowing in
the sky. The moon and stars were still shining.

Dred stood and looked up, and spoke, in a solemn voice.

“Seek him that maketh Arcturus and Orion — that turneth
the shadow of death into morning! Behold those lights
in the sky — the lights in his hands pierced for the sins of
the world, and spread forth as on a cross! But the day
shall come that he shall lay down the yoke, and he will bear
the sin of the world no longer. Then shall come the great
judgment. He will lay righteousness to the line and judgment
to the plummet, and the hail shall sweep away the
refuges of lies.”

He stooped, and, lifting the body, laid him in the grave,
and at this moment the wife broke into a loud lament.

“Hush, woman!” said Dred, raising his hand. “Weep
ye not for the dead, neither bewail him; but weep ye sore
for the living! He must rest till the rest of his brethren
be killed; for the vision is sealed up for an appointed time.
If it tarry, wait for it. It shall surely come, and shall not
tarry!”