After we left the
negro houses, I perceived, with some surprise, that my captors kept the
beaten tract, leading directly to, and past the overseer's dwelling.
"Come, here is a chance, at all events," argued I to myself. "If I get
within hail, I will alarm the lieges, if a deuced good pipe don't fail
me."
This determination had scarcely been framed in my mind, when, as if my
very thoughts had been audible, the smuggler next me on the right hand
drew a pistol, and held it close to my starboard ear.
"Friend, if you tries to raise the house, or speaks to any Niger, or other
person we meets, I'll walk through your skull with two ounces of lead."
"You are particularly obliging," said I; "but what do you promise
yourselves by carrying me off? Were you to murder me, you would be none
the richer; for I have no valuables about me, as you may easily ascertain
by searching me."
"And do you think that freeborn Americans like we have kidnapped you for
your dirty rings, and watch, and mayhap a few dollars, which I takes you
to mean by your waluboles, as you calls them?"
"Why, then, what, in the devil's name, have you kidnapped me for?" And I
began to feel my choler overpowering my discretion, when Mr Paul
Brandywine, who I now suspected to be the mate of the smuggler, took the
small liberty of jerking the landyard, that had been made fast to the
middle of the handspike, so violently, that I thought both my shoulders w
ere dislocated; for I was fairly checked down on my back, just as you may
have seen a pig--merchant on the Fermoy road bring an uproarious boar to
his marrowbones; while the man who had previously threatened to blow my
brains out, knelt beside me, and civilly insinuated, that "if I was tired
of my life, he calculated I had better speak as loud again.
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