CHAPTER XLVII. A NEGRO MOTHER.
LUCY'S cottage was removed from the rest of the cabins, and seemed to sleep in the shade of a wood upon the skirts of which it was situated. In full view from it was a narrow creek, or navigable inlet from the river, which was seen glittering in the sunshine through the screen of cedars and shrubbery that grew upon its banks. A garden occupied the little space in front of the habitation; and here, with some evidence of a taste for embellishment which I had not seen elsewhere in this negro hamlet, flowers were planted in order along the line of the inclosure, and shot up with a gay luxuriance. A draw-well was placed in the middle of this garden, and some few fruit-trees were clustered about it. These improvements had their origin in past years, and owed their present preservation to the thrifty care of the daughter of the aged inhabitant, a spruce, decent and orderly woman, who had been nurtured among the family servants at Swallow Barn, and now resided in the cabin, the sole attendant upon her mother.
When we arrived at this little dwelling, Lucy was alone, her
daughter having, a little while before, left her to make a visit to
the family mansion. The old woman's form showed the double havoc of
age and disease. She was bent forward, and sat near her hearth, with
her elbows resting on her knees; and her hands
(in which she grasped a faded and tattered handkerchief) supported her chin. She was smoking a short and dingy pipe; and, in the weak and childish musing of age, was beating one foot upon the floor with a regular and rapid stroke, such as is common to nurses when lulling a child to sleep. Her gray hairs were covered with a cap; and her attire generally exhibited an attention to cleanliness, which showed the concern of her daughter for her personal comfort.
The lowly furniture of the room corresponded with the appearance of its inmate. It was tidy and convenient, and there were even some manifestations of the ambitious vanity of a female in the fragments of looking-glass, and the small framed prints that hung against the walls. A pensive partner in the quiet comfort of this little apartment, was a large cat, that sat perched upon the sill of the open window, and looked demurely out upon the garden,—as if soberly rebuking the tawdry and gairish bevy of sunflowers that erected their tall, spinster-like figures so near that they almost thrust their heads into the room.
For the first few moments after our arrival, the old woman seemed to be unconscious of our presence. Meriwether spoke to her without receiving an answer; and, at last, after repeating his salutation two or three times, she raised her feeble eyes towards him, and made only a slight recognition by a bow. Whether it was that his voice became more familiar to her ear, or that her memory was suddenly resuscitated, after her master had addressed some questions to her, she all at once brightened up into a lively conviction of the person of her visitor; and, as a smile played across her features, she exclaimed,—
"God bless the young master! I didn't know him. He has come to see poor old mammy Lucy!"
"And how is the old woman?" asked Meriwether, stooping to speak, almost in her ear.
"She hasn't got far to go," replied Luoy. "They are a-coming for her:—they tell me every night that they are a-coming to take her away."
"Who are coming?" inquired Frank.
"They that told the old woman," she returned, looking up wildly and speaking in a louder voice, "that they buried his body in the sands of the sea."
Saying these words, she began to open out the ragged handkerchief which, until now, she had held in her clenched hand.—"They brought me this in the night," she continued,—"and then, I knew it was true."
In the pause that followed, the old negro remained in profound silence, during which the tears ran down her cheeks. After some minutes she seemed suddenly to check her feelings and said, with energy,—
"I told them it was a lie: and so it was! The old woman knew better than them all. Master Frank didn't know it, and Miss Lucretia didn't know it, but mammy Lucy, if she is old, knew it well! Five years last February!—How many years, honey, do you think a ship may keep going steady on without stopping?—It is a right long time,—isn't it, honey?
This exhibition of drivelling dotage was attended with many other incoherent expressions that I have not thought it worth while to notice; and I would not have troubled my reader with these seemingly unmeaning effusions of a mind in the last stages of senility, if they had not some reference to the circumstances I am about to relate. The scene grew painful to us as we prolonged our visit; and therefore, after some kind words to the old woman, we took our departure. As we returned to Swallow Barn, Frank Meriwether gave me the particulars of old Lucy's pathetic history, which I have woven, with as much fidelity as my memory allows, into the following simple and somewhat melancholy narrative.
DURING the latter years of the war of the revolution my uncle Walter Hazard, as I have before informed my reader, commanded a troop of volunteer cavalry, consisting principally of the yeomanry in the neighborhood of Swallow Barn; and, at the time of the southern invasion by Lord Cornwallis, this little band was brought into active service, and shared, as freely as any other corps of the army, the perils of that desultory warfare which was waged upon the borders of North Carolina and Virginia. The gentlemen of the country, at that time, marshalled their neighbors into companies; and, seldom acting in line, were encouraged to harass the enemy wherever opportunity offered. The credit as well as the responsibility of these partisan operations fell to the individual leaders who had respectively signalized themselves by their zeal in the cause.
This kind of irregular army gave great occasion for the display of personal prowess; and there were many gentlemen whose bold adventures, during the period alluded to, furnished the subject of popular anecdotes of highly attractive interest. Such exploits, of course, were attended with their usual marvels; and there was scarcely any leader of note who could not recount some passages in his adventures, where he was indebted for his safety to the attachment and bravery of his followers,—often to that of his personal servants.
Captain Hazard was a good deal distinguished in this war, and took great pleasure in acknowledging his indebtedness, on one occasion, for his escape from imminent peril, to the address and gallantry of an humble retainer,—a faithful negro, by the name of Luke,—whom he had selected from the number of his slaves to attend him as a body-servant through the adventures of the war.
It furnishes the best answer that can be made to all the
exaggerated opinions of the misery of the domestic slavery of this
region, that, in the stormiest period of the history of the United States, and when the whole disposable force of the country was engrossed in the conduct of a fearful conflict, the slaves of Virginia were not only passive to the pressure of a yoke which the philosophy of this age affects to consider as the most intolerable of burthens, but they also, in a multitude of instances, were found in the ranks, by the side of their masters, sharing with them the most formidable dangers, and manifesting their attachment by heroic gallantry.
After the close of the war Captain Hazard was not unmindful of his
trusty servant. Luke had grown into a familiar but respectful intimacy
with his master, and occupied a station about his person of the most
confidential nature. My uncle scarcely ever rode out without him, and
was in the habit of consulting him upon many lesser matters relating
to the estate, with a seriousness that showed the value he set upon
Luke's judgment. He offered Luke his freedom; but the domestic desired
no greater liberty than he then enjoyed, and would not entertain the
idea of any possible separation from the family. Instead, therefore,
of an unavailing, formal grant of manumission, my uncle gave Luke a
few acres of ground, in the neighborhood of the Quarter, and provided
him a comfortable cabin. Before the war had terminated, Luke had
married Lucy, a slave who had been reared in the family, as a lady's
maid, and, occasionally, as a nurse to the children at Swallow Barn.
Things went on very smoothly with them, for many years. But, at
length, Luke waxed old, and began to grow rheumatic; and, by degrees,
retired from his customary duties, which were rendered lighter as his
infirmities increased. Lucy, from the spry and saucy-eyed
waiting-woman, was fast changing into a short, fat and plethoric old
dame. Her locks accumulated the frost of each successive winter; and
she, too, fell back upon the reserve of comfort laid
up for their old age by their master,—who himself, by a like process, had faded away, from the buxom, swashing madcap of the revolutionary day, into a thin, leather-cheeked old campaigner, who sometimes told hugely long stories, and sent for Luke to put his name on the back of them. In short, five and thirty years, had wrought their ordinary miracles; and first, the veteran Luke disappeared from this mortal stage; and then his master: and old Lucy was left a hale and querulous widow, with eight or nine children, and her full dower interest in the cabin and its curtilage.
The youngest, but one, of her children was named Abraham— universally called Abe. All before Abe had arrived at manhood, and had been successively dismissed from Lucy s cabin, as they reached the age fit to render them serviceable, with that satisfied unconcern that belongs to a negro mother who trusts to the kindness of her master. This family was remarkable for its intelligence; and those who had already left the maternal nest had, with perhaps one or two exceptions, been selected for the mechanical employments upon the estate:—they were shoe makers, weavers, or carpenters; and were held in esteem for their industry and good character. Abe, however, was an exception to the general respectability of Luke's descendants. He was, at the period to which my story refers, an athletic and singularly active lad, rapidly approaching to manhood; with a frame not remarkable for size, but well knit, and of uncommonly symmetrical proportions for the race to which he belonged. He had nothing of the flat nose and broad lip of his tribe,—but his face was rather moulded with the prevailing characteristics of the negroes of the West Indies. There was an expression of courage in his eye that answered to the complexion of his mind: he was noted for his spirit, and his occasional bursts of passion, which, even in his boyhood, rendered him an object of fear to his older
associates. This disposition was coupled with singular shrewdness of intellect, and an aptitude for almost every species of handicraft. He had been trained to the work of a blacksmith, and was, when he chose to be so, a useful auxiliary at the anvil. But a habit of associating with the most profligate menials belonging to the extensive community of Swallow Barn, and the neighboring estates, had corrupted his character, and, at the time of life which he had now reached, had rendered him offensive to the whole plantation.
Walter Hazard could never bear the idea of disposing of any of his
negroes; and when Meriwether came to the estate, he was even more
strongly imbued with the same repugnance. Abe was, therefore, for a
long time, permitted to take his own way,—the attachment of the
family for his mother procuring for him an amnesty for many
transgressions. Lucy as is usual in almost all such cases, entertained
an affection for this outcast, surpassing that which she felt for all
the rest of her offspring. There was never a more exemplary domestic
than the mother: nor was she without a painful sense of the failings
of her son; but this only mortified her pride without abating her
fondness—a common effect of strong animal impulses, not merely in
ignorant minds. Abe had always lived in her cabin, and the instinct of
long association predominated over her weak reason; so that although
she was continually tormented with his misdeeds, and did not fail to
reprove him even with habitual harshness, still her heart yearned
secretly towards him. Time fled by, confirming this motherly
attachment, and, in the same degree, hardening Abe into the most
irreclaimable of culprits. He molested the peace of the neighborhood
by continual broils; was frequently detected in acts of depredation
upon the adjoining farms; and had once brought himself into extreme
jeopardy by joining a band of out-lying negroes, who had secured
themselves, for some weeks, in the fast-
nesses of the low-country swamps, from whence they annoyed the vicinity by nocturnal incursions of the most lawless character. Nothing but the interference of Meriwether, at the earnest implorings of Lucy, saved Abe, on this occasion, from public justice. Abe was obliged in consequence to be removed altogether from the estate, and consigned to another sphere of action.
Meriwether revolved this matter with great deliberation; and, at length, determined to put his refractory bondsman in the charge of one of the pilots of the Chesapeake, to whom, it was supposed, he might become a valuable acquisition;—his active, intelligent and intrepid character being well suited to the perilous nature of that service. The arrangements for this purpose were speedily made, and the day of his removal drew nigh.
It was a curious speculation, on the part of the family, and an unpleasant one, to see how Lucy would bear this separation. The negroes, like all other dependants, are marked by an abundant spirit of assentation. They generally agree to whatever is proposed to their minds, by their superiors, with an acquiescence that has the show of conviction. But, it is very hard to convince the mind of a mother, of the justice of the sentence that deprives her of her child,—especially a poor unlearned, negro mother. Lucy heard all the arguments to justify the necessity of sending Abe abroad; assented to all; bowed her head, as if entirely convinced;—and thought it—very hard. She was told that it was the only expedient to save him from prison; she admitted it; but still said—that it was a very cruel thing to sever mother and son. It was a source of unutterable anguish to her, which no kindness on the part of the family could mitigate. Forgetting Abe's growth to manhood, his delinquencies, the torments he had incessantly inflicted upon her peace, and unmindful of the numerous children that, with their descendants, were still around her, she seemed to be engrossed by her affection for this worthless
scion of her stock;—showing how entirely the unreasoning instincts of the animal sway the human mind, in its uneducated condition. All the considerations that proved Abe's banishment a necessary; and, even for himself, a judicious measure, seemed only to afford additional reinforcements to the unquenchable dotings of the mother.
From the time of the discovery of the transgression which brought down upon Abe the sentence that was to remove him from Swallow Barn, until the completion of the preliminary arrangements for his departure, he was left in a state of anxious uncertainty as to his fate. He was afraid to be seen at large, as some risk was hinted to him of seizure by the public authorities; and he, therefore, confined himself, with a sullen and dejected silence, in Lucy's cabin,—seldom venturing beyond the threshold; and, when he did so, it was with the stealthy and suspicious motion which is observable in that class of animals that pursue their prey by night, when induced to stir abroad in daytime.
It is a trait in the dispositions of the negroes on the old plantations, to cling with more than a freeman's interest to the spot of their nativity. They have a strong attachment to the places connected with their earlier associations,—what in phrenology is called inhabitiveness;—and the pride of remaining in one family of masters, and of being transmitted to its posterity with all their own generations, is one of the most remarkable features in these negro clans. Being a people of simple combinations and limited faculty for speculative pleasures, they are a contented race,—not much disturbed by the desire of novelty. Abe was not yet informed whether he was to be sold to a distant owner, given over to public punishment, or condemned to some domestic disgrace. Apparently, he did not much care which:—his natural resoluteness had made him dogged.
It was painful, during this period, to see his mother. In all
respects unlike himself, she suffered intensely; and, though hoary with sixty winters, hovered about him, with that busy assiduity which is one of the simplest forms in which anxiety and grief are apt to show themselves. She abandoned her usual employments, and passed almost all her time within her cabin, in a fretful subserviency to his wants; and, what might seem to be incompatible with this strong emotion of attachment,—though, in fact, it was one of the evidences of its existence,—her tone of addressing him was that of reprimand, seldom substituted by the language of pity or tenderness. I mention this, because it illustrates one point of the negro character. She provided for him, as for a sickly child, what little delicacies her affluence afforded; and, with a furtive industry, plied her needle through the livelong night, in making up, from the scanty materials at her command, such articles of dress as might be found or fancied to be useful to him, in the uncertain changes that awaited him. In these preparations there was even seen a curious attention to matters that might serve only to gratify his vanity; some fantastical and tawdry personal ornaments were to be found amongst the stock of necessaries which her foresight was thus providing.
I hope I shall not be thought tedious in thus minutely remarking
the trifles that were observable in the conduct of the old domestic on
this occasion. My purpose is to bring to the view of my reader an
exhibition of the natural forms in which the passions are displayed in
those lowest and humblest of the departments of human society, and to
represent truly a class of people to whom justice has seldom been
done, and who possess many points of character well calculated to win
them a kind and amiable judgment from the world. They are a neglected
race, who seem to have been excluded from the pale of human sympathy,
from mistaken opinions of their quality, no less than from the
unpretending lowliness of their position. To me, they have always
appeared as a people of agreeable peculiarities, and not without much of the picturesque in the development of their habits and feelings.
When it was, at last, announced that Abe was to be disposed of in the manner I have mentioned, the tidings were received by the mother and son variously, according to their respective tempers. Lucy knew no difference between a separation by a hundred or a thousand miles: she counted none of the probabilities of future intercourse; and the traditionary belief in the danger of the seas, with their unknown monsters, and all the frightful stories of maritime disaster, rose upon her imagination with a terrifying presage of ill to her boy. Abe, on the other hand, received the intelligence with the most callous unconcern. He was not of a frame to blench at peril, or fear misfortune; and his behavior rather indicated resentment at the authority that was exercised over him, than anxiety for the issue. For a time, he mused over this feeling in sullen silence: but, as the expected change of his condition became the subject of constant allusion among his associates, and as the little community in which he had always lived gathered around him, with some signs of unusual interest, to talk over the nature of his employments, a great deal reached his ears from the older negroes, that opened upon his mind a train of perceptions highly congenial to the latent properties of his character. His imagination was awakened by the attractions of this field of adventure; by the free roving of the sailor; and by the tumultuous and spirit-stirring roar of the ocean, as they were pictured to him in story. His person grew erect, his limbs expanded to their natural motion, and he once more walked with the light step and buoyant feelings of his young and wayward nature.
The time of departure arrived. A sloop that had been lying at
anchor in the creek, opposite to Lucy's cabin, was just prepar-
ing to sail. The main-sail was slowly opening its folds, as it rose along the mast: a boat with two negroes had put off for the beach, and the boatmen landed with a summons to Abe, informing him that he was all they now staid for. Abe was seated on his chest in front of the dwelling; and Lucy sat on a stool beside him, with both of his hands clasped in hers. Not a word passed between them; and the heavings of the old woman's bosom might have been heard by the standers-by. A bevy of negroes stood around them: the young ones, in ignorant and wondering silence; and the elders conversing with each other in smothered tones, with an occasional cheering word addressed to mammy Lucy—as they called her. Old uncle Jeff was conspicuous in this scene. He stood in the group, with his corncob pipe, puffing the smoke from his bolster-lips, with lugubriously lengthened visage.
The two boatmen pressed into the crowd to speak to Lucy, but were arrested by the solemn Jeff, who, thrusting out his broad, horny hand, and planting it upon the breast of the foremost, whispered, in a half audible voice,—"The old woman's taking on!—wait a bit—she'll speak presently!"
With these words, the whole company fell into silence and continued to gaze at the mother. Abe looked up, from the place where he sat, through his eyelashes, at the little circle, with an awkwardly counterfeited smile playing through the tears that filled his eyes.
"It a'most goes to kill her," whispered one of the women to her neighbor.
"I've seen women," said Jeff, "this here way, afore in my time: they can bear a monstrous sight. But, when they can once speak, then it's done,—you see."
Lucy was now approached by two or three of the old women, who
began to urge some feeble topics of consolation in her ear in that
simple phrase which nature supplies, and which had more of
encouragement in its tones than in the words: but the only response extracted was a mute shake of the head, and a sorrowful uplifting of the eye, accompanied by a closer grasp of the hands of Abe.
"It's no use," said Jeff, as he poured a volume of smoke from his mouth, and spoke in a deep voice, in the dialect of his people,— "it's no use till nature takes its own way. When the tide over yonder (pointing to the river) comes up, speeches arn't going to send it back: when an old woman's heart is full it's just like the tide."
"The wind is taking hold of the sail," said one of the boatmen, who until now had not interfered in the scene, and the captain has no time to stay."
Lucy looked up and directed her eye to the sloop, whose canvas was alternately filling and shaking in the wind, as the boat vacillated in her position. The last moment had come. The mother arose from her seat, at the same instant with her son, and flung herself upon his neck, where she wept aloud.
"Didn't I tell you so!" whispered Jeff to some old crones; "when it can get out of the bosom by the eyes, it carries a monstrous load with it."
"To be sure!" exclaimed the beldams, which is a form of interjection amongst the negroes, to express both assent and wonder.
This burst of feeling had its expected effect upon Lucy. She
seemed to be suddenly relieved, and was able to address a few short
words of parting to Abe: then taking from the plaits of her bosom, a
small leather purse containing a scant stock of silver,—the hoard of
past years—she put it into the unresisting hand of Abe. The boy
looked at the faded bag for a moment, and gathering up something like
a smile upon his face, he forced the money back upon his mother,
himself replacing it in the bosom
of her dress. "You don't think I am going to take your money with me!" said he, "I never cared about the best silver my master ever had: no, nor for freedom neither. I thought I was always going to stay here on the plantation. I would rather have the handkerchief you wear around your neck, than all the silver you ever owned."
Lucy took the handkerchief from her shoulders, and put it in his hand. Abe drew it into a loose knot about his throat, then turned briskly round, shook hands with the by-standers, and, shouldering his chest, moved with the boatmen, at a rapid pace, towards the beach.
In a few moments afterwards, he was seen standing up in the boat, as it shot out from beneath the bank, and waving his hand to the dusky group he had just left. He then took his seat, and was watched by his melancholy tribe until the sloop, falling away before the wind, disappeared behind the remotest promontory.
Lucy, with a heavy heart, retired within her cabin, and threw herself upon a bed; and the comforting gossips who had collected before the door, after lingering about her for a little while, gradually withdrew, leaving her to the assiduities of her children.
Some years elapsed; during which interval frequent reports had
reached Swallow Barn, relating to the conduct and condition of Abe;
and he himself had, once or twice, revisited the family. Great changes
had been wrought upon him; he had grown into a sturdy manhood,
invigorated by the hardy discipline of his calling. The fearless
qualities of his mind, no less than the activity and strength of his
body, had been greatly developed to the advantage of his character;
and, what does not unfrequently happen the peculiar adaptation of his
new pursuits to the temper and cast of his constitution, had operated
favorably upon his morals. His errant propensities had been gratified;
and the
alternations between the idleness of the calm and the strenuous and exciting bustle of the storm, were pleasing to his unsteady and fitful nature. He had found, in other habits, a vent for inclinations which, when constrained by his former monotonous avocations, had so often broken out into mischievous adventures. In short, Abe was looked upon by his employers as a valuable seaman; and the report of this estimation of him had worked wonders in his favor at Swallow Barn.
From the period of his departure up to this time, poor old Lucy nursed the same extravagant feelings towards him; and these were even kindled into a warmer flame by his increasing good repute. Her passion, it may be called, was a subject of constant notice in the family. It would have been deemed remarkable in an individual of the most delicate nurture; but in the aged and faithful domestic, it was a subject of commiseration on account of its influence upon her happiness, and had almost induced Meriwether to recall Abe to his former occupation; although he was sensible that, by doing so, he might expose him to the risk of relapsing into his earlier errors. But, besides this Abe had become so well content with his present station that it was extremely likely he would of his own accord, have sought to return to it. The vagrant sunshiny, and billowy life of a sailor has a spell in it that works marvellously upon the heedless and irresponsible temperament of a negro. Abe was, therefore, still permitted, like a buoy, to dance upon the waves, and to woo his various destiny between the lowest trough of the sea, and the highest white-cap of the billow.
At the time to which my story has now advanced, an event took
place that excited great interest within the little circle of Swallow
Barn. It was about the breaking up of the winter—towards the latter
end of February—some four years ago, that in the afternoon of a
cheerless day, news arrived at Norfolk that
an inward-bound brig had struck upon the shoal of the middle ground, (a shallow bar that stretches seaward beyond the mouth of the Chesapeake, between the two capes,) and, from the threatening aspect of the weather, the crew were supposed to be in great danger. It was a cold, blustering day, such as winter sometimes puts on when he is about to retreat:—as a squadron, vexed with watching a politic enemy, finding itself obliged, at last, to raise the blockade, is apt to break ground with an unusual show of bravado. The wind blew in gusts from the northwest; a heavy rack of dun and chilly clouds was driven churlishly before the blast, and spitted out some rare flakes of snow. These moving masses were forming a huge, black volume upon the eastern horizon, towards the ocean, as if there encountering the resistance of an adverse gale. From the west the sun occasionally shot forth a lurid ray, that, for the instant, flung upon this dark pile a sombre, purple hue, and lighted up the foam that gathered at the top of the waves, far seaward; thus opening short glimpses of that dreary ocean over which darkness was brooding. The sea-birds soared against the murky vault above them; and, now and then, caught upon their white wings the passing beam, that gave them almost a golden radiance; whilst, at the same time, they screamed their harsh and frequent cries of fear or joy. The surface of the Chesapeake was lashed up into a fretful sea, and the waves were repressed by the weight of the wind; billow pursuing billow with an angry and rapid flight, and barking, with the snappish sullenness of the wolf. Across the wide expanse of Hampton Road might have been seen some few bay-craft, apparently not much larger than the wild-fowl that sailed above them, beating, with a fearful anxiety, against the gale, for such harbors as were nearest at hand; or scudding before it under close-reefed sails, with ungovernable speed, towards the anchorages to leeward. Every moment the wind increased in violence; the clouds
swept nearer to the waters; the gloom thickened; the birds sought safety on the land; the little barks were quickly vanishing from view; and, before the hour of sunset, earth, air, and sea were blended into one mass, in which the eye might vainly endeavor to define the boundaries of each: whilst the fierce howling of the wind, and the deafening uproar of the ocean gave a desolation to the scene, that made those, who looked upon it from the shore, devoutly thankful that no ill luck had tempted them upon the flood.
It was at this time that a pilot-boat was seen moored to a post at the end of a wooden wharf that formed the principal landing- place at the little seaport of Hampton. The waves were dashing, with hollow reverberations, between the timbers of the wharf, and the boat was rocking with a violence that showed the extreme agitation of the element upon which it floated. Three or four sailors—all negroes—clad in rough pea-jackets, with blue and red woollen caps, were standing upon the wharf or upon the deck of the boat, apparently making some arrangements for venturing out of the harbor. The principal personage among them, whose commands were given with a bold and earnest voice, and promptly obeyed, was our stout friend Abe, now grown into the full perfection of manhood, with a frame of unsurpassed strength and agility. At the nearer extremity of this wharf, landward, were a few other mariners, white men, of a weather-beaten exterior, who had seemingly just walked from the village to the landing-place, and were engaged in a grave consultation upon some question of interest. This group approached the former while they were yet busy with the tackling of the boat. Abe had stepped aboard with his companions, and they were about letting all loose for their departure.
"What do you think of it now, Abe?" asked one of the older seamen,
as he turned his eyes towards the heavens, with a look of
concern. "Are you still so crazy as to think of venturing out in this gale?"
"The storm is like a young wolf," replied Abe. "It gets one hour older and two worse. But this isn't the hardest blow I ever saw, Master Crocket."
"It will be so dark to-night," said the other, "that you will not be able to see your jib; and, by the time the wind gets round to the northeast. you will have a drift of snow that will shut your eyes. It will be a dreadful night outside of the capes; I see no good that is to come of your foolhardiness."
"Snow-storm or hail-storm, it's all one to me," answered Abe. "The little Flying Fish has ridden, summer and winter, over as heavy seas as ever rolled in the Chesapeake. I knows what she can do, you see!"
"Why, you couldn't find the brig if you were within a cable's
length of her, such a night as this," said another speaker; "and
if you were to see her I don't know how you are to get alongside."
"You wouldn't say so, master Wilson," returned Abe, "if you were one of the crew of the brig yourself. We can try, you know; and if no good comes on it, let them that saunt me judge of that. I always obeys orders!"
"Well," replied the other, "a negro that is born to be hanged— you know the rest, Abe:—the devil may help you, as he sometimes does."
"There is as good help for a negro as there is for a white man, master Wilson—whether on land or water. And no man is going to die till his time comes. I don't set up for more spirit than other people; but I never was afeard of the sea."
During this short dialogue, Abe and his comrades were busily reefing the sail, and they had now completed all their preparations. The day had come very near to the hour of sunset. Abe mustered his crew, spoke to them with a brave, encouraging tone, and ordered them to cast off from the wharf. In a moment, all hands were at the halyards; and the buoyant little Flying Fish sprang from her mooring, under a single sail double-reefed, and bounded along before the wind, like an exulting doe, loosened from thraldom, on her native wastes.
"That's a daring fellow!" said one of the party that stood upon the wharf, as they watched the gallant boat heaving playfully through the foam—"and wouldn't mind going to sea astride a shark, if any one would challenge him to it."
"If any man along the Chesapeake." said the other, "can handle a pilot-boat such weather—Abe can. But it's no use for a man to be tempting Providence in this way. It looks wicked!"
"He is on a good errand," interrupted the first speaker. "And God send him a successful venture! That negro has a great deal of good and bad both in him—but the good has the upper hand."
The Flying Fish was soon far from the speakers, and now showed her little sail, as she bent it down almost to kiss the water, a spotless vision upon the dark and lowering horizon in the east. At length she was observed close hauled upon the wind, and rapidly skimming behind the headlands of Old Point Comfort; whence, after some interval, she again emerged, lessened to the size of a water-fowl by distance, and holding her course, with a steady and resolute speed, into the palpable obscure of the perspective.
When the last trace of this winged messenger of comfort was lost in the terrific desert of ocean, with its incumbent night, the watchful and anxious spectators on the wharf turned about and directed their steps, with thoughtful forebodings, to the public house at some distance in the village.
From what I have related, the reader will be at no loss to
understand the purpose of this perilous adventure. The fact was, that
as soon as the intelligence reached Norfolk that the brig had got into
the dangerous situation which I have described, some of the good
people of that borough took measures to communicate with the crew, and
to furnish them such means of relief as the suddenness of the
emergency enabled them to command. The most obvious suggestion was
adopted of dispatching, forthwith, a small vessel to bring away those
on board, if it should be ascertained that there was no hope of saving
the brig itself. This scheme, however, was not so easy of
accomplishment as it, at first, seemed. Application was made to the
most experienced mariners in port to undertake this voyage; but, they
either evaded the duty, by suggesting doubts of its utility, or cast
their eyes towards the heavens and significantly shook their heads, as
they affirmed there would be more certainty of loss to the deliverers
than to the people of the stranded vessel. The rising tempest and the
unruly season boded disaster to whomsoever should be so rash as
to encounter the hazard. Rewards were offered; but these, too, failed of effect, and the good intentions of the citizens of Norfolk were well nigh disappointed, when chance brought the subject to the knowledge of our old acquaintance Abe. This stout- hearted black happened to be in the borough at the time; and was one of a knot of seamen who were discussing the proposition of the chances of affording relief. He heard, attentively, all that was said in disparagement of the projected enterprise; and it was with some emotion of secret pleasure that he learned that several seamen of established reputation had declined to undertake the venture. The predominant pride of his nature was aroused; and he hastened to say, that whatever terrors this voyage had for others, it had none for him. In order, therefore, that he might vouch the sincerity of his assertion by acts, he went immediately to those who had interested themselves in concerting the measure of relief, and tendered his services for the proposed exploit. As may be supposed, they were eagerly accepted. Abe's conditions were, that he should have the choice of his boat, and the selection of his crew. These terms were readily granted; and he set off, with a busy alacrity, to make his preparations. The Flying Fish was the pilot-boat in which Abe had often sailed, and was considered one of the best of her class in the Chesapeake. This little bark was, accordingly, demanded for the service, and as promptly put at Abe's command. She was, at that time, lying at the pier at Hampton, as I have already described her. The crew, from some such motive of pride as first induced Abe to volunteer in this cause, was selected entirely from the number of negro seamen then in Norfolk. They amounted to four or five of the most daring and robust of Abe's associates, who, lured by the hope of reward, as well as impelled by that spirit of rivalry that belongs to even the lowest classes of human beings, and which is particularly excitable in the breasts of men who are trained to dangerous achieve-
ments, readily enlisted in the expedition, and placed themselves under the orders of their gallant and venturous captain.
This tender of service and its acceptance, produced an almost universal reprobation of its rashness, from the sea-faring men of the port. And while all acknowledged that the enterprise could not have been committed to a more able or skilful mariner than Abe, yet it was declared to be the endeavor of a fool-hardy madman who was rushing on his fate. The expression of such distrust only operated as an additional stimulant to Abe's resolution, and served to hurry him, the more urgently forward, to the execution of his purpose. He, therefore, with such dispatch as the nature of his preparations allowed, mustered his intrepid crew in the harbor of Norfolk, and repaired with them to the opposite shore of the James River, to the little sea-port, where my reader has already seen him embarking upon his brave voyage, amidst the disheartening auguries of wise and disciplined veterans of the sea.
I might stop to compare this act of an humble and unknown negro,
upon the Chesapeake, with the many similar passages in the lives of
heroes whose names have been preserved fresh in the verdure of
history, and who have won their immortality upon less noble feats than
this; but History is a step-mother, and gives the bauble fame to her
own children, with such favoritism as she lists, overlooking many a
goodly portion of the family of her husband Time. Still, it was a
gallant thing, and worthy of a better chronicler than I, to see this
leader and his little band—the children of a despised stock—swayed
by a noble emulation to relieve the distressed; and (what the fashion
of the world will deem a higher glory) impelled by that love of daring
which the romancers call chivalry—throwing themselves upon the unruly
waves of winter, and flying, on the wing of the storm, into the
profound, dark abyss of ocean, when all his terrors were gathering in
their
most hideous forms; when the spirit of ill shrieked in the blast, and thick night, dreary with unusual horrors, was falling close around them; when old mariners grew pale with the thought of the danger, and the wisest counselled the adventurers against the certain doom that hung upon their path:—I say, it was a gallant sight to see such heroism shining out in an humble slave of the Old Dominion!
They say the night that followed was a night of the wildest horrors. Not a star twinkled in the black heavens: the winds rushed forth, like some pent-up flood suddenly overbearing its barriers, and swept through the air with palpable density: men, who chanced to wander at that time, found it difficult to keep their footing on the land: the steeples of Norfolk groaned with the unwonted pressure; chimneys were blown from their seats; houses were unroofed, and the howling elements terrified those who were gathered around their own hearths, and made them silent with fear: the pious fell upon their knees: nurses could not hush their children to sleep: bold-hearted revellers were dismayed, and broke up their meetings: the crash of trees, fences, outbuildings mingled with the ravings of the tempest: the icicles were swept from the eaves, and from every penthouse, till they fell in the streets like hail: ships were stranded at the wharves, or were lifted, by an unnatural tide, into the streets: the ocean roared with more terrific bass than the mighty wind, and threw its spray into the near heaven, with which it seemed in contact: and, as anxious seamen looked out at intervals during the night, towards the Atlantic, the light house, that usually shot its ray over the deep, was invisible to their gaze, or seemed only by glimpses, like a little star immeasurably remote, wading through foam and darkness.
What became of our argonauts?—The next morning told the tale. One
seaman alone of the brig survived to relate the fate of
his companions. In the darkest hour of the night their vessel went to pieces, and every soul on board perished, except this man. He had bound himself to a spar, and, by that miraculous fortune which the frequent history of shipwreck recounts, he was thrown upon the beach near Cape Henry. Bruised, chafed, and almost dead, he was discovered in the morning and carried to a neighboring house, where care and nursing restored him to his strength. All that this mariner could tell was, that early in the night, perhaps about eight o'clock,—and before the storm had risen to its height, (although, at that hour, it raged with fearful vehemence,) a light was seen gliding, with the swiftness of a meteor, past the wreck; a hailing cry was heard as from a trumpet, but the wind smothered its tones and rendered them inarticulate; and, in the next moment, the spectre of a sail (for no one of the sufferers believed it real) flitted by them, as with a rush of wings, so close that some affirmed they could have touched it with their hands: that, about an hour afterwards, the same hideous phantom, with the same awful salutation, was seen and heard by many on board, a second time: that the crew, terrified by this warning, made all preparations to meet their fate; and when at last, in the highest exasperation of the storm, the same apparition made its third visit, the timbers of the brig parted at every joint, and all, except the relator himself, were supposed to have been ingulfed in the wave, and given to instant death.
Such, was the sum of this man's story. What was subsequently known, proved its most horrible conjecture to be fatally true.
Various speculation was indulged, during the first week after this
disaster, as to the destiny of Abe and his companions. No tidings
having arrived, some affirmed that nothing more would ever be heard of
them. Others said that they might have luffed up close in the wind and
ridden out the night, as the Flying Fish was stanch and true: others,
again, held that there was even a
chance, that they had scudded before the gale, and, having good sea-room, had escaped into the middle of the Atlantic. No vessels appeared upon the coast for several days, and the hope of receiving news of Abe, was not abandoned.
The next week came and went. There were arrivals, but no word of the Flying Fish. Anxiety began to give way to the conviction that all were lost But, when the third week passed over, and commerce grew frequent, as the spring advanced, all doubts were abandoned, and the loss of the Flying Fish and her crew, ceased any longer to furnish topics of discussion.
My reader must now get back to Swallow Barn. The story of Abe's adventure had reached the plantation, greatly exaggerated in all the details; none of which were concealed from Lucy. On the contrary, the wonder-loving women of the Quarter daily reported to her additional particulars, filled with extravagant marvels, in which, so far from manifesting a desire to soothe the feelings of the mother and reconcile her to the doom of Abe, all manner of appalling circumstances were added, as if for the pleasure of giving a higher gust to the tale.
It may appear unaccountable, but it was the fact, that Lucy, instead of giving herself up to such grief as might have been expected from her attachment to her son, received the intelligence even with composure. She shed no tears, and scarcely deserted her customary occupations. She was remarked only to have become more solitary in her habits, and to evince an urgent and eager solicitude to hear whatever came from Norfolk, or from the Chesapeake. Scarcely a stranger visited Swallow Barn, for some months after the event I have recounted, that the old woman did not take an occasion to hold some conversation with him; in which all her inquiries tended to the tidings which might have existed of the missing seamen.
As time rolled on, Lucy's anxiety seemed rather to increase;
and it wrought severely upon her health. She was observed to be falling fast into the weakness and decrepitude of age: her temper grew fretful, and her pursuits still more lonesome. Frequently, she shut herself up in her cabin for a week or a fortnight, during which periods she refused to be seen by any one. And now, tears began to visit her withered cheeks. Meriwether made frequent efforts to reason her out of this painful melancholy; her reply to all his arguments was uniformly the same;—it was simple and affecting—"I cannot give him up, master Frank!"
In this way a year elapsed; but, with its passage, came no confirmation to Lucy's mind of the fate of her son; and so far was time from bridging an assuagement of her grief, that it only cast a more permanent dejection over her mind. She spoke continually upon the subject of Abe's return, whenever she conversed with any one; and her fancy was filled with notions of preternatural warnings, which she had received in dreams, and in her solitary communings with herself. The females of the family at Swallow Barn exercised the most tender assiduities towards the old servant, and directed all their persuasions to impress upon her the positive certainty of the loss of Abe; they endeavored to lift up her perception to the consolations of religion,—but the insuperable difficulty which they found in the way of all attempts to comfort her, was the impossibility of convincing her that the case was, even yet, hopeless. That dreadful suspense of the mind, when it trembles in the balance between a mother's instinctive love for her offspring, on the one side, and the thought of its perdition on the other, was more than the philosophy or resignation of an ignorant old negro woman could overcome. It was to her the sickness of the heart that belongs to hope deferred,—and the more poignant, because the subject of it was incapable of even that moderate and common share of reason that would have intelligently weighed the facts of the case.
Months were now added to the year of unavailing regrets that had been spent. No one ever heard Lucy say wherefore, but all knew that she still reckoned Abe's return amongst expected events. It was now, in the vain thought that the old woman's mind would yield to the certainty implied by the lapse of time and the absence of tidings, that my cousin Lucretia prepared a suit of mourning for her, and sent it, with an exhortation that she would wear it in commemoration of the death of her son. Meriwether laid some stress upon this device; for, he said, grief was a selfish emotion, and had some strange alliance with vanity.—It was a metaphysical conceit of his, which was founded in deep observation; and he looked to see it illustrated in the effect of the mourning present upon Lucy. She took the dress—it was of some fine bombazet,—gazed at it, with a curious and melancholy eye, and then shook her head and said,—it was a mistake:—"I will never put on that dress," she observed, "because it would be bad luck to Abe. What would Abe say if he was to catch mammy Lucy wearing black clothes for him?"
They left the dress with her, and she was seen to put it carefully away. Some say that she was observed in her cabin, one morning soon after this, through the window, dressed out in this suit; but she was never known to wear it at any other time. About this period, she began to give manifest indications of a decay of reason. This was first exhibited in unusual wanderings, by night, into the neighboring wood; and then, by a growing habit of speaking and singing to herself. With the loss of her mind her frame still wasted away, and she gradually began to lose her erect position.
Amongst the eccentric and painful developments of her increasing aberration of mind, was one which presented the predominating illusion that beset her in an unusually vivid point of view.
One dark and blustering night of winter, the third anniversary of that on which Abe had sailed upon his desperate voyage,—for Lucy had noted the date although others had not,—near midnight, the inhabitants of the Quarter were roused from their respective cabins by loud knockings in succession at their doors; and when each was opened, there stood the decrepit figure of old Lucy, who was thus making a circuit to invite her neighbors, as she said, to her house.
"He has come back!" said Lucy to each one, as they loosed their bolts; "he has come back! I always told you he would come back upon this very night! Come and see him! Come and see him! Abe is waiting to see his friends to-night."
Either awed by the superstitious feeling that a maniac inspires in the breasts of the ignorant, or incited by curiosity, most of the old negroes followed Lucy to her cabin. As they approached it, the windows gleamed with a broad light, and it was with some strange sensations of terror that they assembled at her threshold, where she stood upon the step, with her hand upon the latch. Before she opened the door to admit her wondering guests, she applied her mouth to the keyhole, and said in an audible whisper, "Abe, the people are all ready to see you, honey! Don't be frightened,—there's nobody will do you harm!"
Then, turning towards her companions, she said, bowing her head,—
"Come in, good folks! There's plenty for you all. Come in and see how he is grown!"
She now threw open the door, and, followed by the rest, entered the room. There was a small table set out, covered with a sheet; and upon it three or four candles were placed in bottles for candlesticks. All the chairs she had were ranged around this table, and a bright fire blazed in the hearth.
"Speak to them, Abe!" said the old woman, with a broad
laugh. "This is uncle Jeff, and here is Dinah, and here is Ben,"—and in this manner she ran over the names of all present; then continued,—
"Sit down, you negroes! Have you no manners? Sit down and eat as much as you choose; there is plenty in the house. Mammy Lucy knew Abe was coming: and see what a fine feast she has made for him!"
She now seated herself, and addressing an empty chair beside her, as if some one occupied it, lavished upon the imaginary Abe a thousand expressions of solicitude and kindness. At length she said,—
"The poor boy is tired, for he has not slept these many long nights. You must leave him now:—he will go to bed. Get you gone! get you gone! you have all eaten enough!"
Dismayed and wrought upon by the unnatural aspect of the scene, the party of visitors quitted the cabin almost immediately upon the command; and the crazed old menial was left alone to indulge her sad communion with the vision of her fancy.
From that time until the period at which I saw her, she continued
occasionally to exhibit the same evidences of insanity. There were
intervals, however, in which she appeared almost restored to her
reason. During one of these, some of the negroes hoping to remove the
illusion that Abe was still alive, brought her a handkerchief
resembling that which she had given to him on his first departure;
and, in delivering it to her, reported a fabricated tale, that it had
been taken from around the neck of Abe, by a sailor who had seen the
body washed up by the tide upon the beach of the sea, and had sent
this relic to Lucy as a token of her son's death. She seemed, at last,
to believe the tale; and took the handkerchief and put it away in her
bosom. This event only gave a more sober tone to her madness. She now
keeps more closely over her hearth, where she generally
passes the livelong day, in the posture in which we found her. Sometimes she is heard muttering to herself, "They buried his body in the sands of the sea," which she will repeat a hundred times. At others, she falls into a sad but whimsical speculation, the drift of which is implied in the question that she put to Meriwether whilst we remained in her cottage;—"How many years may a ship sail at sea without stopping?"