CHAPTER XX. THE CAPTIVES.
Cæsar, the captive negro, was, as we have before represented him, not
only a family servant, brought up about the house, but he was a personal
attendant upon the younger Lee. As soon as Frank heard the exclamations
of surprise from those who knew the negro, he at once drew back in the
crowd, and did not again present himself before him, until complete quiet was
restored in the camp. Then he sought the solitary quarters of his father's
old servant, and it may readily be imagined that it was a painful meeting on
both sides. Frank had not seen Cæsar before, since he left College, and the
first sight of such a living memento of by-gone years, would under any circumstances
call up painful reflections, but when he thought of the old negro's
equivocal position, and the suspicion which others entertained as well as himself,
that he was not there of his own accord, he could have wept over the
deep degradation and mortification of the African. Cæsar looked as if he
could have fallen down at his young master's feet and wept too, and yet he
did not dare to approach him. Frank, on his part, was in fully as painful a
position towards the old servant—he felt for him, on account of the considerations
before mentioned, but he could not accept the negro's atonement, through
the inculpation of his only brother.
“I will tell you all—de whole trut, 'fore God, Mass Frank,” exclaimed the
poor penitent.
“Not a single word to me, Cæsar—I will not hear it. You are to be sent
back to the capital to-morrow, and it will be time enough to make your disclosures
when the Governor returns; but even then he will not listen to you,
unless you have white testimony to corroborate your statements. You see,
therefore, unless you produce that testimony, you are likely to suffer in your
own person. Nay, do not answer me. I understand all you would say, and
it is with the hope of saving you from punishment, that I have called to see
you. I will endeavor so to explain the matter to the Governor, that he will
make your punishment at all events light, if not remit it altogether; but it
can only be brought about by your master and yourself leaving the country.
I will write to him this night, or rather this morning, and point out to him his
proper course. I did purpose, likewise, to ask you many questions about the
old place, but I had not anticipated how painful the sight of you thus would
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be. I will, therefore, defer it to a more fitting opportunity. By that time, I
trust you will be far from scenes that may bring back to your recollection
this degradation. Little did I think when last I saw you, as one of the time
honored servants of my father, ever to look upon you in chains as a criminal.
I am as much mortified as if you had been one of my own kinsmen. Farewell,
Cæsar!”
The old fellow stretched out his hand, amidst a plentiful shower of tears,
and could only exclaim, between his agonizing sobs, “Oh! Mass Frank, God
bless you!”
Frank returned at once to write the promised letter, for it may be readily
imagined that he felt little disposed to sleep. It was short, but to the point.
Camp Negro Foot.
To Henry Lee, Esq.:
The ink would blister the paper, could I be guilty of the hypocrisy of commencing
a letter to you with an endearing epithet, after all that is past and
gone. Indeed, it was my intention never to have addressed you again in
any manner this side of the grave. I thought you had done your worst
towards me and mine, and I was resolved, if I could not forgive, that I would
at least bear it in silence. But I was mistaken, you had not done your worst,
as this night's experience teaches me. I find that my heart yearns towards every
thing connected with the happy days of our infancy. Over many of these
you have power, and through these you can wound me grievously. I do not,
and will not, charge you with suborning one of our father's faithful servants
to his own ruin and disgrace. I leave it entirely with you and your God.—
But if even innocent, (which I trust in God you are,) yet you are responsible
for their conduct. Nay, the world, even your old associates here, hold you
now as the accessory before the fact, to this poor fellow's crime. Oh, Henry,
how have your passions led you on, from step to step, to this degradation!
Can you be the proud boy that I once knew as an affectionate brother? But
I will not be weak; my object in writing is merely a matter of business. I
have a proposition to make to you—it is that you abandon your home and
country forever. Start not, but listen to me. You know that you will be
largely indebted to me for the yearly proceeds of my property, every cent of
which you have drawn, and which I understand you will not be able to repay,
without sacrificing your own property. Now, I propose to give you a clear
quittance for the whole of it, if you will sail for Europe before my return, and
take poor Cæsar with you. I know that you can find means to liberate him—
indeed, I do not think the Governor himself will be much displeased to find
this scheme carried into effect upon his return. Reflect well upon it, and may
God forgive you for your past errors. I shall never cease to pray not only for
that, but that I may myself learn to grant you that tree and full forgiveness
which I daily ask him for myself.
Your brother,
Frank Lee.
While Lee thus communed with his father's once faithful servant, and afterwards
with his brother in writing, the Governor held a very different dialogue
with the other captive. In this emergency, the scout was found to be a real
treasure; for besides his woodman's craft, he could converse so as to be understood
by the young rogue whom his own ingenuity had taken prisoner. Having
ascertained this, the Governor ordered Joe and his captive into his marquee.
We will not take the reader through the tedious process of the double questions
and answers, but give Joe's version of the old chief's talk and the young
savage's replies, at least so far as they are pertinent to our narrative. And
thus he rendered his patron's exordium. “Do you know, you d—d young
raseal, that the great Father of all the white folks between the herring pond
and sun-down is a goin' to stretch your wind-pipe?” Here there was a
pause—after which, the captive made one or two short guttural exclamations.
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“What does he say, Jarvis?” exclaimed His Excellency impatiently.
“Why, Sir, he says he does not understand a word of your talk, nor what I
mean in his own lingo by a stretchin' of his wind-pipe. I reckon he never
seed the operation performed. As you've got to hang the snow-ball any how
down yonder, would'nt it be as well jist to let me tuck him up before this
young varmint? I guess he'd understand that, and then you could jist make
what you please out of him.”
“Pshaw, pshaw, Jarvis, don't make yourself out more brutal than you
really are. You would be the first man to rescue even that poor negro from
a watery grave.”
“You may say that, your Excellency, seein' I pulled him out of the water
no very long time ago; but to speak the truth and shame the devil, it was kase
I hated to see the gallows cheated out of its due.”
“Well, well, have your own way, but make this fellow understand that he
has fairly forfeited his life.”
“Look here, stranger, (in the Indian language,) you've got to pull hemp, a
standin' on nothin'.”
“Ugh!” a sort of note of interrogation from the captive.
“Oh! you don't know what hemp is, don't you? Well, it's a weed that
grows plenty in this Colony, one of the wholesomest bitters as grows, but
howsomdever it kills lots of people. What! you don't understand that
neither. Well, may be you'll understand this”—(and he took a cord laying
in one corner of the tent, and making a running noose, slipt it over the lad's
head, and began to tighten it apace.) “You understand that, don't you?
Oh, I thought so—well, the Governor wants to know if you are willing to save
your neck by bein' of use to him?”
To this he replied in the affirmative. The Governor then asked him through
Joe, if he had ever been over the mountains. He said he had often. When
asked if he would pilot the expedition over—he said he would. This matter
being arranged, he was next interrogated as to his agency in the massacre and
burning of Germana. He stoutly denied that he had been there at all, but
acknowledged that his father and brother had. He was next asked if he knew
anything of the young lady (Eugenia Elliot) who had been abducted from that
place. He said that he had not seen her, but he had heard that she had been
taken over the mountains, with the people from the Indian villages, who had
fled before the Governor's troops. After many other inquiries as to their
treatment of female captives—their customs with regard to the marriage of
such persons to native chiefs, the nature of the country beyond the mountains,
&c., &c., he was remanded to the care of the guard on duty. These latter
replies were of such a consolatory nature, that the Governor, as soon as the
day had dawned, threw himself in the way of young Hall, to cheer him also
with the news. He stated to him (upon the authority of his captive) that his
people were in the hahit of disposing of female captives to the nearest relations
of those who had fallen in the battle where such captives were taken.
But as no lives were lost in the sacking of Germana, he had understood that
the young lady (pale faced squaw) was to be given to the young Chief for
whom Wingina was originally intended, and that that very Chief had been
Joe's formidable antagonist last night.
All this was truly heart-cheering to poor Hall, especially that part which
assured him that the Chief for whom his Eugenia was intended, was still hovering
upon their outskirts, and was likely to be, until the expedition was triumphantly
completed, or abandoned in despair. He knew Gov. Spotswood's
character too well, to believe for one moment that he would ever abandon the
poor girl to her fate. There was one point that he interceded hard for, and
that was that the Governor would permit him to take the captive as his own,
set him free and go with him over the mountains, ahead of the troops. To
this, of course, the Governor would not listen for a moment.
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It was a gallant sight to behold that bright and joyous band of cavaliers, in
their plumes and brilliant dresses and fluttering banners, not yet soiled by the
dust and toil of travel, as they wound through the green vistas fresh from the
hands of nature, and their prancing steeds still elastic and buoyant with high
blood and breeding. It cheered the heart of the veteran warrior, their commander,
to see the columns file off before him as he sat upon his horse and
received their salutes. The expedition numbered in its ranks some of the
most hopeful scions of the old aristocratic stock of Virginia, some, whose
descendants were destined to make imperishable names in the future history,
of their country, and many whose descendants still figure honorably in the
highest trusts of the republic.
The route to Germana was little varied by adventures or mishaps of any
kind; but the country through which they passed was hourly becoming more
bold and picturesque, and the scenery more grand and imposing. The land
commenced to be what, in the language of the country, is called rolling. It
was broken into long wavy or undulating lines, scarcely amounting to a hill,
and yet relieving the eye, in a great measure, from the monotony of the dead
level tide water country. The romantic and excited youths who surrounded
the Governor, were already expressing themselves in raptures at the new
views every moment bursting upon their vision. Many of them had never
in their lives beheld any thing so lovely. At these raptures the old chief
would smile, and sometimes encourage their enthusiasm, but always foretelling
them of the Apalachian wonders which they would behold. Indeed, being
a native of a bold and mountainous country himself, he longed as much as
any of them to feast his eye on the top of a crag, from which he could
behold a horizon with mountains piled upon mountains, one behind another,
reaching, as it were, to meet the clouds.
Sometimes he would descant upon these mountain wonders, and tell of his
own boyish adventures in his native land, until his moist eye told of his still
clinging affections to that glorious land, rich in whatever delights the heart of
the patriot, and richer above all, in a border minstrelsy and traditionary
treasures, now consecrated to everlasting love and remembrance, with the
name of him who has made them familiar as household words in every civilized
family, from the rising to the setting sun. We thank God that we have
lived in the days when those tales of witchery and romance were sent forth
from Abbotsford, to cheer the desponding hearts of thousands, and tens of
thousands. He not only threw a romantic charm around the scenes of his
stories, but he has actually made the world we live in more lovely in our
eyes. The visions which his magic wand created before our youthful eyes,
rise up in every hill and vale in our own bright and favored land. Who is there
that has not, ere now, found his imagination clothing some lass, as she burst
upon his view from a mountain defile in full canter, with the imperishable
vestments of Die Vernon?
Gov. Spotswood was by no means singular in his ardent attachment to his
native hills. It has often been remarked how ardent is the attachment to
home of every mountaineer, and as this homely feeling is the basis of all
true patriotism, it is a feeling to be admired and cherished. Philosophers
may wonder why it is that the natives of these cloud capped regions should
be more devotedly attached to them, than the tide-landers are to their ocean-washed
homes, and they may endeavor to fathom the why and the wherefore,
with no more success than hitherto. We simply state the fact from personal
experience. It has been our fate to exchange a home, combining the grandest
and the loveliest extremes of nature—the green valley and the rugged mountain
cliff—the serenest pictures of domestic comfort, in juxtaposition with the
wildest ravines and most towering precipices—for one within the reach of old
Neptune's everlasting roar—and our heart still yearns towards our native
mountains.
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Germana, was alas! in ruins. The mill, which benevolence, more than
any hope of gain, had induced the Governor to have erected there, was a mere
shell, its stone walls black and disfigured with smoke. The water wheel was
still in perpetual revolution to a fruitless end, set in motion, no doubt, by the
wanton wickedness of the savages. But these things, seen from a distance,
were soon displaced by one of horror, which arrested their attention upon
the halt of the army at the ruins of the old stockade. The dead bodies of
their friends lay unburied and half consumed by wild beasts and birds of prey
or partially blackened and disfigured by fire.
As Frank Lee walked away in melancholy reverie from this disgusting
sight, his footsteps were followed by the scout, whom he heard muttering
every now and then, “I'm glad of it! I am glad of it!”
Lee wheeled upon him, almost fiercely, and demanded what there was to
rejoice him in such a sight?
“Oh! I beg your pardon, Squire, I'm not glad the poor fellers were sculped!
by no manner o' means; I only meant to say, I was glad the Governor had
seen it. Now, he'll know how we scouts come to hate the yaller niggers as
we do. This will cure him of all the love he ever had for the etarnal critters,
and when we come to meet 'em face to face, if so be that ever is, why then
he'll let us go at them with a will.”
“Is that all, well here's my hand upon it, Jarvis—you are right—for it has
produced exactly the effect on me, which you have predicted of our commander.”
“I know the critters, Squire, like a book, and a great deal better.”
Caruthers, William Alexander, 1802-1846 [1845], The knights of the horse-shoe: a traditionary tale of the cocked hat gentry in the old dominion (Charles Yancey, Wetumpka, Alabama) [word count] [eaf040].
