Chapter III

It was the pilot's story:--"They both came aboard there, at Cairo,
From a New Orleans boat, and took passage with us for Saint Louis.
She was a beautiful woman, with just enough blood from her mother
Darkening her eyes and her hair to make her race known to a trader:
You would have thought she was white. The man that was with
her,--you see such,--
Weakly good-natured and kind, and weakly good-natured and vicious,
Slender of body and soul, fit neither for loving nor hating.
I was a youngster then, and only learning the river,--
Not over-fond of the wheel. I used to watch them at monte,
Down in the cabin at night, and learned to know all of the
gamblers.
So when I saw this weak one staking his money against them,
Betting upon the turn of the cards, I knew what was coming:
_They_ never left their pigeons a single feather to fly with.
Next day I saw them together,--the stranger and one of the
gamblers:
Picturesque rascal he was, with long black hair and moustaches,
Black slouch hat drawn down to his eyes from his villanous
forehead.
On together they moved, still earnestly talking in whispers,
On toward the forecastle, where sat the woman alone by the gangway.
Roused by the fall of feet, she turned, and, beholding her master,
Greeted him with a smile that was more like a wife's than
another's,
Rose to meet him fondly, and then, with the dread apprehension
Always haunting the slave, fell her eye on the face of the
gambler,--
Dark and lustful and fierce and full of merciless cunning.
Something was spoken so low that I could not hear what the words
were;
Only the woman started, and looked from one to the other,
With imploring eyes, bewildered hands, and a tremor
All through her frame: I saw her from where I was standing, she
shook so.
'Say! is it so?' she cried. On the weak, white lips of her master
Died a sickly smile, and he said, 'Louise, I have sold you.'
God is my judge! May I never see such a look of despairing,
Desolate anguish, as that which the woman cast on her master,
Griping her breast with her little hands, as if he had stabbed her,
Standing in silence a space, as fixed as the Indian woman
Carved out of wood, on the pilot-house of the old Pocahontas!
Then, with a gurgling moan, like the sound in the throat of the
dying,
Came back her voice, that, rising, fluttered, through wild
incoherence,
Into a terrible shriek that stopped my heart while she answered:--
'Sold me? sold me? sold--And you promised to give me my freedom!--
Promised me, for the sake of our little boy in Saint Louis!
What will you say to our boy, when he cries for me there in Saint
Louis?
What will you say to our God?--Ah, you have been joking! I see
it!--
No? God! God! He shall hear it,--and all of the angels in heaven,--
Even the devils in hell!--and none will believe when they hear it!
Sold me!'--Her voice died away with a wail, and in silence
Down she sank on the deck, and covered her face with her fingers."

IV.

In his story a moment the pilot paused, while we listened
To the salute of a boat, that, rounding the point of an island,
Flamed toward us with fires that seemed to burn from the waters,--
Stately and vast and swift, and borne on the heart of the current.
Then, with the mighty voice of a giant challenged to battle,
Rose the responsive whistle, and all the echoes of island,
Swamp-land, glade, and brake replied with a myriad clamor,
Like wild birds that are suddenly startled from slumber at
midnight,
Then were at peace once more; and we heard the harsh cries of the
peacocks
Perched on a tree by a cabin-door, where the white-headed settler's
White-headed children stood to look at the boat as it passed them,
Passed them so near that we heard their happy talk and their
laughter.
Softly the sunset had faded, and now on the eastern horizon
Hung, like a tear in the sky, the beautiful star of the evening.