The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865

Miss Emma buried her face in the moss. But Flor, secretly relishing a good thunder-gust, drew up her knees and sat with equanimity, like a little black judge of the clouds; for, in the moment's dull, indifferent mood, she felt prepared for either fate. It was long before the rain came; then it plunged, a brief downfall, as if a cloud had been ripped and emptied,—a suffocating terror of rain, teeming with more appalling intimations than anything else in the world. But the wind was a blind tornado. The boughs swung over them and swept them; the swamp-water was lifted, and gluts of it slapped in Flor's face. She saw, not far away, a great solitary cypress rearing its head, and bearing aloft a broad eagle's nest, hurriedly seized in the grasp of the gale, twisted, raised, and snapped like a straw. The child began to shudder strangely at the breath of this blast that cried with such clamor out of the black vaults above, this unknown and tremendous power beneath which she was nothing but a mote; she suffered an unexplained awe, as if this fearful wind were some supernatural assemblage of souls fleeting through space and making the earth tremble under their wild rush. All the while the heavy thunders charged on high in one unbroken roar, across whose base sharp bolts broke and burst perpetually; and with the outer world wrapped in quivering curtains of blue flame, now and then a shaft of fire lanced its straight spear down the dense darkness of the woods behind in ghastly illumination, and a responsive spire shot up in some burning bush that blackened almost as instantly. Flor fancied that the lightning was searching for her, a runaway herself, and the burning bush answered, like a sentinel, that here she was. She cowered at length and sought the protection of the blind earth, full of awe and quaking, till by-and-by the last discharge, muffled and ponderous, rolled away, and, save for a muttered growl in some far distant den, the world was still and dark again.

Flor spoke to her mistress, and found, that, utterly worn out with fatigue and fright and exhausted electricity, she was asleep. She then got up and wrung out the rain from portions of her own and Miss Emma's dress, and heaped fresh armfuls of moss upon the sleeper in an original attempt at the pack; then she proceeded to explore the neighborhood, to see if there were any exit in other directions from the terrors of the swamp.

Stars began to struggle through and confuse their rays with the ravelled edges of the clouds. She groped along from tree to tree, looking constantly behind her at the clear, light opening of sky beneath which Miss Emma lay.

Perhaps she had come farther than she knew; for all at once, in the dread stillness that nothing but the dripping dampness broke, a sound smote her like a pang. It was an innocent and simple sound enough, a man's voice, clear and sweet, though measured somewhat, and suppressed in volume, chanting a slow, sad hymn, that had yet a kind of rejoicing about it:—

"Oh, no longer bond in Egypt,
No longer bond in Egypt,
No longer bond in Egypt.
The Lord hath set him free!"

It came from a hollow below her. Flor pushed aside the great, glistening leaves in silence, and looked tremblingly in. There were half-burnt brands on a broad stone, throwing out an uncertain red glimmer; there was an awning of plaited reeds reaching from bough to bough; there was an old man stretched upon the ground, and a stalwart man sitting beside him and chanting this song, as if it were a burial-service: for the old man was dead.

Flor began to tremble again, with that instinctive animal antipathy to death and dissolution. But in an instant a rekindling gleam of the embers, hardly quenched, shot over the singer's face. In the same instant Flor shook before the secret she had learned, Sarp was a runaway, to be sure; and runaways ate little girls, she knew. But Flor, having lately encouraged incredulity, could hardly find it in her heart to believe that the fact of having stolen himself could have so utterly changed the old nature of Sarp, the kind butler, who always had a pleasant word for her when others had a cuff. Yet should she hail him? Ah, no, never! But then—Miss Emma! Her young mistress would die of starvation and the damp.

"Sarp!" whispered Flor, huskily.

The man started and sprang to his feet, alert and ready, waiting for his unseen enemy,—then half relapsed, thinking it might be nothing but the twitter of a bird.

"It's me, Sarp."

Who that was did not seem so plain to Sarp; he darted his swift glance in her direction, then at one step parted the bushes and dragged her through, as if it were game that he had trapped.

"Oh, Sarp!" cried Flor, falling at his feet. "Doan' yer kill me now! I di'n' mean to ha' found yer. I's done los' in de swamp, wid"–

But Flor thought better of that.

The man raised her, but still held her out at arm's length, while he listened for further sound behind her.

"Oh, jus' le' go, Sarp, an' I'll dance for you till I drap!" she cried.

"Is it a time for dancing," he replied, "and the earth open for burying?"

"Lors, Sarp!" cried Flor, shrinking from the shallow grave she had not seen, "how's I to know dat?"—and she gave herself safe distance.

"Help me yere, then," said he.

But Flor remained immovable, and Sarp was obliged to perform by himself the last offices for the old slave, who, living out his term of harassments and hungers, had grown gray and died in the swamps. He went at last and brought an armful of broken sweet-flowering boughs and spread them over the place.

"Free among the dead," he said; then turned to Flor, who, having long since seen daylight through the darkness of her fears, proceeded glibly and volubly to pour out her troubles, on his beckoning her away, and to demand the help she had refused to render.

"There's the boat," said Sarp, reflectively. "And the rain will float it 'most anywheres to-night. But—come so far and troo so much to go back?"

Flor flung up her face and held her head back proudly.

"Yes, Sah! Doan' s'pose I'd be stealin' Mas'r Henry's niggers?"

For, having meditated upon it an hour ago, she was able to repel the charge vigorously.

"Go'n' to stay a slave all your life?"

"All Miss Emma's life."

"And—afterwards"–

"Den I'll go back to de good brown earth wid her," said Flor, solving the problem promptly.—"I doan' see de boat."

"Ah, she'll make as brown dust as you,—Miss Emma,—that's so! But the spirit, Lome!"

"Sperit?" said Flor, looking uneasily over her shoulder with her twinkling eyes.

"The part of you that doan' die, Lome."

"I haan' nof'n ter do wid dat; dat 'longs to dem as made it; none o' my lookout; dono nof'n 'bout it, an' doan' want ter hear nof'n about it!" said Flor; for, reasoning on the old adage of a bird in the hand being worth two in the bush, she thought it more important just at present to save her body than to save her soul, admitting that she had one, and felt haste to be of more behoof than metaphysics.

There was a moon up now, and Flor could see her companion's dark face above her, a mere mass of shade; it did not reassure her any to remember that her own was just as black.

"Lome," said Sarp, setting his back against a tree like one determined to have attention, "never mind about the boat yet. You 've heard Aunt Zoë say how't the grace of the Lord was free?"

"Yes, I's heerd her kerwhoopin'. I 's in a hurry, Sarp!"

"But 's how't the man that refuses to accept it, when it's set before him, is done reckoned a sinner?"

"S'pose I has?"—and in her impatience she began to dance outright.

"It's jus' so with the present hour," he continued, not giving her time to interpose about escape again. "You have liberty offered you. If you refuses, how can you answer for it when your spirit 'pears afore the Judge? You choose him, and you choose righteousness, you chooses the chance to make yourself white in the Lord's eyes,—your spirit, Lome. Refuse, and you take sin and chains and darkness; you gets to deserve the place where they hab their share of fire and brimstone."

"Take mine wid 'lasses," said Flor, who, though inwardly a trifle cowed, never meant to show it. "W'a' 's de use o' boderin' 'bout all dat ar, w'en dar 's Miss Emma a-cotchin' her deff, an' I 's jus' starved? Ef you 's go'n' to help us, Sarp"–

"You don' know what chains means, chil'," said the imperturbable Sarp. "They're none the lighter because you can't see 'em. It a'n't jus' the power to sell your body and the work of your hands; it's the power to sell your soul! Ef Mas'r Henry hab de min',—ef Mas'r Henry have the mind, I say, to make you go wrong, can you help it while you 's a slave?"

"'Taan' no fault o' mine ter be bad, ef I caan' help it. Come now," said Flor sullenly, seeing little hope of respite,—"should t'ink 'twas de Ol' Sarpint hisself!"

"And 'taan' no virtue of yours to be good, ef you caan' help it; you 'd jus' stay put—jus' between—in de brown earth, as you said. You 'd never see that beautiful land beyond the grave, wid the river of light flowing troo der place, an' the people singing songs before the great white t'rone."

"Tell me 'bout dat ar, Sarp," said Flor, forgetfully.

"Dey 's all free there, Lome."

"How was dis dey got dere? Could n' walk nowes, an' could n' fly"–

"Haan' you seen into Miss Emma's prayer-book the angels with wings high and shining all from head to foot?"

"Yes," said Flor,—"Angels."

"And one of them you 'll be, Lome, ef you jus' choose,—ef, for instance, you choose liberty to-day."