“Did you feel scared, Uncle Dan’l?”
“No sah! When a man is ‘gaged in prah, he ain’t fraid o’ nuffin–dey
can’t nuffin tetch him.”
“Well what did you run for?”
“Well, I–I–mars Clay, when a man is under de influence ob de sperit,
he do-no, what he’s ’bout–no sah; dat man do-no what he’s ’bout. You
mout take an’ tah de head off’n dat man an’ he wouldn’t scasely fine it
out. Date’s de Hebrew chil’en dat went frough de fiah; dey was burnt
considable–ob coase dey was; but dey didn’t know nuffin ’bout it–heal
right up agin; if dey’d ben gals dey’d missed dey long haah, (hair,)
maybe, but dey wouldn’t felt de burn.”
“I don’t know but what they were girls. I think they were.”
“Now mars Clay, you knows bettern dat. Sometimes a body can’t tell
whedder you’s a sayin’ what you means or whedder you’s a sayin’ what you
don’t mean, ‘case you says ’em bofe de same way.”
“But how should I know whether they were boys or girls?”
“Goodness sakes, mars Clay, don’t de Good Book say? ‘Sides, don’t it
call ’em de HE-brew chil’en? If dey was gals wouldn’t dey be de SHE-brew
chil’en? Some people dat kin read don’t ‘pear to take no notice when dey
do read.”
“Well, Uncle Dan’l, I think that—– My! here comes another one up the
river! There can’t be two!”
“We gone dis time–we done gone dis time, sho’! Dey ain’t two, mars
Clay–days de same one. De Lord kin ‘pear eberywhah in a second.
Goodness, how do fiah and de smoke do belch up! Dat mean business,
honey. He comin’ now like he fo’got sumfin. Come ‘long, chil’en, time
you’s gwyne to roos’. Go ‘long wid you–ole Uncle Daniel gwyne out in de
woods to rastle in prah–de ole nigger gwyne to do what he kin to sabe
you agin”
He did go to the woods and pray; but he went so far that he doubted,
himself, if the Lord heard him when He went by.
CHAPTER IV.
–Seventhly, Before his Voyage, He should make his peace with God,
satisfie his Creditors if he be in debt; Pray earnestly to God to prosper
him in his Voyage, and to keep him from danger, and, if he be ‘sui juris’
he should make his last will, and wisely order all his affairs, since
many that go far abroad, return not home. (This good and Christian
Counsel is given by Martinus Zeilerus in his Apodemical Canons before his
Itinerary of Spain and Portugal.)
Early in the morning Squire Hawkins took passage in a small steamboat,
with his family and his two slaves, and presently the bell rang, the
stage-plank; was hauled in, and the vessel proceeded up the river.
The children and the slaves were not much more at ease after finding out
that this monster was a creature of human contrivance than they were the
night before when they thought it the Lord of heaven and earth. They
started, in fright, every time the gauge-cocks sent out an angry hiss,
and they quaked from head to foot when the mud-valves thundered. The
shivering of the boat under the beating of the wheels was sheer misery to
them.
But of course familiarity with these things soon took away their terrors,
and then the voyage at once became a glorious adventure, a royal progress
through the very heart and home of romance, a realization of their
rosiest wonder-dreams. They sat by the hour in the shade of the pilot
house on the hurricane deck and looked out over the curving expanses of
the river sparkling in the sunlight. Sometimes the boat fought the mid-
stream current, with a verdant world on either hand, and remote from
both; sometimes she closed in under a point, where the dead water and the
helping eddies were, and shaved the bank so closely that the decks were
swept by the jungle of over-hanging willows and littered with a spoil of
leaves; departing from these “points” she regularly crossed the river
every five miles, avoiding the “bight” of the great binds and thus
escaping the strong current; sometimes she went out and skirted a high