Chapter IV: Part II (3)

In the air of celebration, with the spirits of every one about her vaulting, Baxter felt by contrast tired and depressed. She dawdled over to Bluton’s rig. What a scramble there was for the flasks! She hadn’t touched a drop since she came to the camp. Perhaps just a half pint might pick her up. She pulled the bandana out of her bosom and handed the mulatto fifty cents. The hot liquor was strong in her throat. It did not take long to saturate the system, like beer or wine. There was a great scramble for the last few bottles. Suddenly, as though animated by some overpowering force outside of herself, Baxter brushed the squabbling men aside, seized the last flask, and, flinging her bandana out, emptied it on the floor of the vehicle. Then everybody laughed as she shied the first flask, now empty, at a distant yellow pine. Near by half a dozen young bucks were skylarking, tussling with each other. A splendidly proportioned young black threw a larger one for a solid fall and turned to the onlookers with a shout of boastful laughter. Baxter sauntered amiably toward him, took him by the collar, snatched him suddenly across her knee and administered a resounding spank where his pants were stretched the tightest. She probably owed her easy success in some degree to the surprise of her attack, but it delighted the onlookers, who held their sides for laughter.

She felt her spirits soar. Life was glowing and singing for her again. What use were the lonesome blues, anyhow!

Time for meeting. The lodge members all wore their regalia--broad, flat blue sashes edged with silver fringe, crossing their breasts from shoulder to hip. The keeper of the great key arrived and elbowed her way through the crowd to the door of the building that served as both church and lodge room. Suspended about her neck on a silken rope was a silver key a foot in length. It was tremendously impressive. She fumbled beneath it in her bosom and finally brought out a small, rusty key with a dirty red string tied through its ring. Then with this she opened the ten-cent padlock that held the two panels of the sagging portal together. Ready hands opened the doors wide and placed props against them, and the crowd surged into the steaming room and seated themselves noisily on the unstable backless benches to await the coming of the preacher.

* * * * *

The Reverend Quintus Whaley let his large and cherished body through the door of his well-kept cabin and turned his steps toward the church. He had a broad sensual mouth and a pair of small cunning eyes that gleamed avidly under heavy eyelids. As he walked ponderously through the twilight the alternate advance of right and left thighs kept his pendulous belly swinging, not without a certain massive dignity, from side to side. He wore a new black tail-coat, a recent gift from the mining company, and the watch, which he presently hauled from a pocket in his alpaca vest, had come as a Christmas reminder of the fact that the white folks not only gave him his bread but buttered it as well. Astute as he was, he little realised the fact that, for the investment that he represented, he was the most valuable, though unproclaimed retainer of the corporation. The allowance at the commissary for supplies, the best cabin in the village--these were good, but the coat and watch that invested him with all the dignity of a city preacher--well, they made it very easy for him to see the hand of God behind all of the labour policies of the Company. He smiled now to himself as he remembered the threatened exodus of labour during the past autumn. One of the more intelligent and daring men had gone North to work and had sent home such good reports that much unrest resulted. A land with big wages--and no Proc Baggart. Then, fortunately for the Company, the man had died of pneumonia. Acting upon a brilliant inspiration, they had telegraphed instructions to have the body cremated before shipping. But it was the Reverend Quintus whose magnificent rolling rhythms had pointed to the hand of God in the fate that had befallen their brother. And it was he who had exhibited to the awed negroes the ashes that alone remained of the daring adventurer.

He entered the church, smiling and bowing from right to left. The sisters greeted him effusively, craning forward to warm themselves in the light of his smiles. But the men sat unmoved and, for the most part, silent. The reading desk was quite high, reaching to the preacher’s shoulders, and there was a shelf beneath the open Bible to which the Reverend, with remarkable dexterity for so heavy a man, now transferred a pint flask from beneath his coat.

A shrill leading soprano flung the first clear notes of a spiritual into the close silence. A tenor rang in and chimed with it from the last bench, then the full chorus lifted and beat against the thin clapboarded walls in recurrent waves of melancholy beauty.

The Reverend Quintus dropped to his knees behind the high reading desk and, safe from view, drew the cork from his bottle and took a long preliminary pull. He was not always so lucky. To-night he would speak with the tongue, not of men, but of angels.

* * * * *

Baxter had not entered the building with the crowd. Her high spirits had not endured, and now she wanted to be alone. Maum Vina had lingered, watching her a little anxiously, but she sent the old woman in and promised to follow soon. The cool of evening was creeping up out of the swamp, sending low, flat layers of mist over the parched and tortured mining fields, banking up in the avenues under the live oaks, swimming out over the marsh to blur the horizon. As night grew heavy in the East, a gleam like phosphorus under dark water commenced to fringe the skyline, and the watcher knew that the lights were going on in the city. Mamba would be putting Lissa to bed.

Of late the pain of missing had become almost more than the mother could bear. She almost never saw the girl now. Mamba could only leave the Atkinsons on Sunday morning while the children were at Sunday school and church; and that was Lissa’s opportunity to sing in the choir and meet the well-to-do members of her race. Mamba had pointed this out, and it had been accepted with that blind obedience that made Baxter still seem so much of a child. But the mother’s spirit was the prisoner of a past from which it would not free itself because the present offered it no harbourage. And she could no longer visualise Lissa clearly--the child of even a few months ago was becoming confused with an imagined portrait of the young girl into which she was growing.

She dashed a hand across her eyes; she looked at the moisture streaked along the dark skin that she was holding before her face in the gloom. She forced a laugh, short and bitter, there by herself in the night. Deliberately she lifted her second flask, half emptied it, then set it mechanically beside her. Now the bitterness and the pain were ebbing. She let her memory go back into the old days, and, instead of the ache of longing, she experienced a warm sense of immediacy--an illusion of reality so intense that she almost felt the touch of soft skin against her hands. The image was quite clear now--no longer confused with physical change--the child that had been hers was hers to keep now, always, like this, near her.

She was happy now with her head bowed upon her lifted knees. Over the eastern marshes the moon pushed its flattened disk of copper, pulled free of the horizon, rounded out to a perfect sphere and brightened to polished brass. Then it sailed confidently up toward the zenith.

Maum Vina left the church building and came to hunt for Baxter. She was relieved to see her sitting so still. Touching her on the shoulder, she dispelled the reverie. There was a new peace in the big face with its features of a child that Baxter raised. The moon was well up now, pouring its light down on the cabins and church, arranging the little settlement rigidly in a cubist pattern of sharp blacks and whites, planes and angles. The church windows were three yellow slabs on a black rectangle. Baxter sighed heavily and got to her feet. Then she remembered the flask, picked it up with an odd detachment of manner, drained it, and threw it in a clump of bushes.

Maum Vina led her by the hand toward the church, and she went submissively, moving hugely behind the wiry little figure.

* * * * *

They entered the building at a dramatic moment. The Reverend Quintus was sending his mellifluous syllables against the walls in a call for confession and repentance, when a violent and misdirected gesture dislodged his nearly emptied flask from its snug retreat and sent it clattering, naked and blatant, down on the floor beneath fifty pairs of astonished eyes.

There was a moment of silence; then a crashing roar of laughter from the congregation. That was dangerous. The cloth could endure anything but ridicule. He leaned forward over the desk, and his tremendous voice rose over the babblement among the benches. In his extremity he relapsed into the thick Gullah dialect that he seldom employed in the pulpit.

“Onnah heah me condemn de hypocrite--enty? Onnah heah me say confess--enty? If onnah confess and repent when onnah ain’t gots no sin, den onnah is hypocrite. An’ God despise hypocrite worse dan rattlesnake. So now, in de presence ob dis congregation, I done t’row my licker down an’ confess my sin. An’ I calls on ebery nigger in deese walls fuh t’row he licker down! Yeah, verily, if dere be one among yo’ what is widout de sin ob hypocracy, let him be de fus’ to cas’ he licker down!”

He paused for breath, and there was an uneasy fidgeting on the benches. He was quick to follow up his advantage.

“Remembuh what de hymn say: ‘Hypocrite, hypocrite, God despise. He tongue so nimble an’ he will tell lies.’”

He was glaring down at them now, and there was none to meet the condemnation in his eyes. He allowed the silence to grow for a full minute, then snapped the tension with a thundering blow on the desk and, without preface, flung his great, resonant voice into the opening line of a spiritual. Old tactics! But they could always be counted on in an emergency. Sitting protectively over their own flasks, his brethren were well content to let bygones be bygones and to hurry the present into the past with song.

* * * * *

It was time for the love feast. The committee had the refreshments ready--gaudy little factory-made cakes from the commissary, cherry bounce, thinned economically with lemonade. But the spirit of song had seized the bodies of the congregation, and the gross appetites of the stomach were forgotten. They passed the plates to a few, but the singers would have none of them. Benches were being thrown back and the floor cleared for a shout. Already splay feet were slapping the loose boards of the floor. The spiritual rang out:

“Oh, mornin’ star is in de West--
Honour de Lamb, honour de Lamb!
An’ I wish dat star was in my breast.
Honour de Lamb, honour de Lamb....”

Now the shouters were in full swing, bodies that could give themselves utterly to a rhythm swayed and bent; here two facing each other, the rest forgotten; there several together with a more concerted interplay. But always the feet hit the same time, swaying and rattling the whole building.

“Oh, way down yonder in de Harbes’ Fiel’--
Honour de Lamb, honour de Lamb!
Angel workin’ on de cha’iot wheel.
Honour de Lamb, honour de Lamb!”

One of the larger groups started to circle, and a ring shout was under way. The refreshment committee knew that this could last until morning. They put their plates aside to be eaten by those who would drop out later from exhaustion.

Shrill and piercing above the more measured rhythm of the spiritual, with its worship of the new Christ, cut the voice of a soprano in the Gullah shouting rhythm:

“Simmi yubba leaba, simmi uyh,
Ronda bohda simmi yuh....”

Only the two lines, but repeated interminably in a heavily syncopated measure, with the concerted stamping of the feet crashing through it like the thunder of a tribal tom-tom.

Some of the older people began to drop out and reach gratefully for the cooling drink. But, with the younger, the excitement mounted. Women screamed. Men emptied their flasks openly, their feet holding the rhythm the while.

Ned was there. He had tried to persuade Dolly to come, but she never went out with him now, and had said she was ill and would go to bed. They had a sort of understanding now. He did not ask much of her--except not to go around openly with Bluton. She was not to shame him before everybody. Now he looked up from his shouting and saw them in the door. Dolly was good-looking, the best-looking woman in the room. Her full figure was pressed close to the man to whose arm she clung. Gilly had been drinking, and the beast that he was looked unguarded out from his face. The cunning, bestiality, hypocrisy--there they were. His eyes were fixed on Ned, gloating with insolent amusement. The man and woman left the doorway and sauntered into the room. Then, with the rhythm of the shouters, who were so rapt that they were dazed, rushing it up to a swift dramatic climax, tragedy was upon them.

Ned had his razor out, holding it as the old razor fighters used to, the handle clenched lightly in his hand, and the blade with back resting against the closed fingers of his fist. Held so, it could not close on its owner and could be hurled downward with the full weight of the fist behind it. Some one snatched up one lamp and hurled it from a window, but one remained hanging from a beam and could not be reached. There was a rush for doors and windows. When the crowd gained the open and looked back, it was over. Ned had vanished as if by magic. Dolly was gone. Of the three principals in the drama Bluton alone remained. He lay under the lamp that was swinging slightly, casting his shadow eerily from side to side, creating a terrifying illusion of movement. He was not alone. Baxter loomed above him. She stood as though hypnotised, looking down at the dark venous blood that flowed out of the slashed clothing and sent the arc of its sinister circle rapidly toward her. Now it was under one of her great bare feet. She moved. A foot slid sickeningly and waked her suddenly from her trance.

“Sweet Jedus!” she ejaculated and dropped to her knees.

Knife wounds were nothing new to her. She opened a slashed sleeve and examined the cut. It was as clean and incisive as surgery--but, God! she didn’t know a man had so much blood to spill. She hoisted her skirt, snatched off her petticoat and tore it into strips. She saw the windows and doors, then, filled with wide eyes and sullen faces.

“Gimme a han’, somebody,” she called. “Can’t be yo’ goin’ stan’ dere an’ let a man dead!”

No one moved. Their hatred of Bluton seemed to make the air dark and thick about the kneeling woman. Ned had done it for them. They had only to go away and leave him. But no one could muster the courage to call her off. They could only watch and see which way the dice would fall--“Good Luck Gilly”--or the rest of them. He lay with his face toward her. There was a slash across the forehead close to the hair and, below it, the yellow skin had gone a ghastly grey. Alone--he was worse off than she, for all his money and his dubious good luck. His hand lay flung open beside her. It was long-fingered, sensual, soft, with that beauty of modelling so often found in the hand of a negro. The palm was scarcely lighter than the outer skin. She took it in both of hers, his plight forgotten for the moment. Her brain had been cloudy with liquor, but the excitement had charged across it like an electric storm and left it clear and ringing, but it was a thing separate from herself, working irresistibly from premises of its own choosing. The slender hand lying between her strong, dark ones held her fascinated gaze. It dissociated itself from the personality of Bluton. The touch of it made her flinch, but she could not release it. Then she knew why: it was an enlarged replica of Lissa’s, shaped and coloured the same. A warm smothering sensation took her suddenly, making her senses lurch and waver. Then her starved maternity took Bluton in. It was instinctive but it was utter. For that night, while he lay alone and near to death, she gave him all that she could have given to her own flesh and blood.

She worked with frantic haste. A band tied above a wound and drawn tight with her bare hands was as effectual as a tourniquet. He was deeply slashed in both arms as he had shielded his face with them, and there was that gash across the forehead. After the uproar in the room its poisoned atmosphere now hung in a dead and ominous quiet. The silent watchers at the window waited, their eyes following Baxter’s every movement. No arteries had been cut, but the veins had poured out the man’s life until he was in desperate straits. The ghastly visage thrown up toward the light showed that something must be done immediately. Baxter bound the wounds, staunching the bleeding. Then she stood up and met the eyes that were fixed on her.

“We gots to get um to town quick,” she said. “If we can get um in de hospital, maybe dey can pull um t’rough.”

Not a body moved. They kept on standing there staring at her inimically. She faced them desperately. Oh, if she only had Mamba now! Mamba who always made plans, pushed things through. She turned back on her own resources, and a plan began to form. She met old Drayton’s eyes peering in a window, and in a second she had him by the arm.

“Listen!” she shot into his face. “Yo’ go an’ break in de commissary stable an’ get de wagon here soon as yo’ can. Ah’ll fix it wid Mr. Saint.” The old man hesitated. “If dat wagon ain’t here in fibe minute I ain’t nebber goin’ dig anoder pit wid yo’. Onnerstan’!”

She loosed him and he started for the stable at an unsteady run.

A voice that was unable to conceal its satisfaction called out, “Dat ain’t no use. Dey ain’t le’s nuthin’ but city niggers free to de hospital. Country nigger gots to pay in exvance.”

“Dat all right,” Baxter answered. “Gilly always gots money.”

She dropped on her knees and went through Bluton’s pockets. Not a penny. Then they all remembered at once. The man had stripped the settlement of every cent on the whisky sale and had carried the money away to hide. The irony of the situation struck the negro humour and they began to laugh.

“Sarve um right,” some one called. “Can’t trus’ we--now he can dead. Ain’t nuttin’ but a low white-folks nigger nohow.”

The big woman glared at them.

“He ain’t goin’ dead. Yo’ hear dat, yo’ dirty passel ob yellow-liver nigger?--He ain’t goin’ dead. ’Cause Ah’s goin’ see um t’rough.”

The wagon rattled up. Baxter heard it, stooped, lifted her charge in her arms, and, taking him from the building, lay him on the floor of the vehicle. There was an old tarpaulin on the seat. She spread it carefully over him and climbed in. Then she looked down at the sullen crowd about the wagon and lashed them with her parting words.

“Yo’ gawd-damned low-livered niggers. Yo’ fair mak’ me ’shamed tuh be black.”

No one answered, and the vehicle started off under the live oaks with the horse moving soundlessly between the deep sandy ruts and the passenger lying, awful in his immobility, under the tarpaulin.

* * * * *

Baxter brought all of her faculties to bear on the problem of getting him into the hospital. If she could only have Mamba here now--she would know what to do. Then, slowly, under the urge of necessity, her brain began to evolve a scheme. What if he were found near the hospital--lying unconscious in the street--who would know that he was not a town nigger? She had had friends who had been found so by the police and carried to the hospital, where they were cared for. She knew the city well. The police were few in the quiet part of the town. Perhaps she could slip through the darkened streets and leave Bluton on one of the beats.

They had covered several miles before she finally decided to risk the plan. She had been so intent upon it that no other consideration had entered her mind. Now she was aware of a menacing shadow--a prescience that all was not right. Then it came down upon her like a physical blow--what if she were caught? Two years in jail. Immediately the horror elaborated itself in her quickened imagination. What would Mamba say? Lissa!--All the young girl’s toney friends--her music--and her ma in the jail! They would throw Lissa out--she knew it. Instantly it loomed insurmountable before her. But here was Bluton--she could not let him die now. Sweat burst out on her face, cold and clammy in the night air.

With the odd instinct of dumb animals, the horse had sensed her hesitation and stopped in the middle of the road. She mopped her streaming face. Then, with a decisive gesture, she slapped the animal’s back with the slack lines. She’d have to gamble on her luck. Maybe it had changed. Anyway, she’d have to see it through.

She was on the main road now, and the going was good. In the distance she could see the taut thread of the bridge, white under the moonlight, and the red light at the draw glowing like a single ruby at its centre. Then came a short drive over the flats, with the marsh talking to her in its soft plopping monosyllables.

On the planking now, the loose timbers making a thunder of sound in her apprehensive ears as the shod hoofs fell rhythmically against them. The draw was closed. That made it final. She must go ahead now. Had it been left open to-night, as was sometimes done, fate would have turned her back. A high tide ran under the bridge, sweeping the moon’s silver under it in a shining flood. Overhead the luminous disk--no longer brass, but a cold platinum--was so brilliant that its light had drowned out all of the lesser stars. The vehicle, with its silent passenger and the great hunched figure of its driver, moved toward the dark clustered buildings of the city as though it advanced beneath a vast flood light upon a gargantuan stage.

The toll office was closed for the night, but Baxter’s approach had been heralded by the noise of the vehicle, and as she left the bridge she saw the night watchman waiting. He was a very old, bent man, and he stood swinging his stick and peering up in surprise.

“Where you goin’ this hour of the night?” he called querulously, with the pettishness of one who has just been awakened. Then Baxter remembered that she had no money to pay toll.

“Jus’ takin’ some truck to town,” she said lamely. “I’ll pay comin’ back when de office open.”

But the persistent old creature would not let it go at that. She had stopped the wagon, and he now came up and peered over the side. He was standing there, undecided what to do. Baxter’s mind was in panic. Should she risk bolting for it with the old horse and heavy wagon? They were both silent, trying to make up their minds. Bluton became the deciding factor. There was movement beneath the canvas and a low, agonized groan. With an instinctive reflex action, Baxter’s foot shot out and caught the horse full on the rump. An astonished spring jerked the vehicle clear of the watchman. Then the animal gathered himself together and set off with the vehicle clattering and jouncing over the cobbles. The din would bring the whole town down about her ears if it continued, and so, as soon as the driver collected her wits, she threw her weight on the right line with the result that they were plunged into the immediate peace of an unpaved side street. She pulled the animal down to a walk and listened with her heart thumping heavily in her throat. There was no sound of pursuit. Evidently the watchman had gone back to his nap and the policeman had been at the remote end of his beat.

She waited a moment under a shade tree to quiet the trembling animal and to gather courage for the plunge from the pool of shadow into the relentless moonlight. Confidence that her luck had changed began to come. She had won the first break. The horse was quiet now. She must get on with it.

She moved out of the shadow, driving slowly and soundlessly in the soft deeply rutted earth. Now her whole being seemed concentrated in her sense of hearing. In the remote residential section through which she was passing the stillness was so absolute that she even heard faint snoring in one of the houses. Then, with a sudden intrusion of humour into tragedy, came a fretful female voice waking the offender and telling him to lie on his side. Then came footsteps on the pavement of a side street, indolent, heavy, maddening in their deliberation. Baxter pulled the wagon under the wide-flung branches of a tree and waited. Around the corner a half block away came a policeman. He was swinging his club by its thong, and his head was thrown back while he gazed up into the wonder of the night. Without looking down, he pursued his leisurely way down the street past where Baxter was waiting.

She saw his broad back receding ahead of her and knew that for the second time luck had been with her. Now she had only to wait until he was out of earshot, then follow, discharge her passenger near the hospital, and the officer would find him on his next round. Presently she was under way again and covered the three blocks to her destination without adventure.

She pulled the wagon into the shadow of a palmetto. A faint air was talking to the tree, and it was answering in its harsh gutturals, so different from the voices of other trees. The sound frightened Baxter, but she conquered her qualms. She climbed down and removed the canvas from Bluton’s form. Then she saw that his eyes were open and fixed upon her.

“Oh, dat yo’, Baxter?” he said in a weak voice. “What de hell is all dis about, anyhow?” Then he moved, became aware of his wounds, and groaned loudly.

“Shut yo’ damn’ mout’,” she answered fiercely; then gathered him up, carried him into the light, and placed him on the pavement. Bending down, she spoke almost savagely into his face.

“Yo’ want fuh dead?”

“Fuh Gawd’s sake, no! You wouldn’t----”

She cut him off. “Berry well, den. Listen! Keep yo’ eye an’ yo’ mout’ shet. Don’t tell nobody who yo’ is or whar yo’ come from. Got dat straight?”

He nodded. Then she saw that the exertion had caused him to faint again.

She drove the rig down a side street, tied the horse beneath a tree, and crept back to watch. She had not long to wait. The deliberate steps were coming back. She saw the figure now, a black, solid bulk in the white light.

Now he was fairly on the supine form of Bluton. Had he gone blind? Then, “Well, I’ll be god damned!”

He stooped, made a swift examination, then rose quickly, trotted to a box on the corner, and put in a call. Scarcely had he got back to the inert form before the wagon came. Two alert figures sprang out and lifted the wounded man in. Then, with a single clang of the bell, the vehicle lunged away toward the hospital.

* * * * *

Baxter slipped back around the corner of the fence that had been shielding her and returned to the wagon. There, suddenly, in her moment of triumph, she knew that she had lost. The bridge was the only way back, and the irate watchman would be waiting for her there. There would be no disguising her great body that always got her into trouble. She was caught in a trap. The realisation came with a numbing shock and paralysed her initiative. Mamba! She must get to her and ask her what to do. The recklessness generated by the whisky had gone from her blood; the maternal impulse that had driven her blindly into her danger was passing. She was suddenly terribly afraid; a little whimpering sound escaped her.

Then she heard a human voice, casually conversational, expressing amused surprise. “Well, if here ain’t the big un back in town!”

She looked down and knew the man instantly. He had called for her more than once in the room on East Bay, and he had been the officer who had carried her off that last fateful night.

She was speechless, sitting massively above him, sobbing freely now into the crook of her arm. Down on the pavement the Celtic intuition in the big square body was beginning to put two and two together.

“So, it’s you that just dumped the high yaller on Calhoun Street? Well, I got to hand it to you; you ain’t fergot how to take ’em to pieces! Reckon you better drive back there to the box while I call a special to take you in.”

“I swear to Gawd, chief, I ain’t cut dat nigger up. Listen ’fore yo’ call, fuh Gawd’ sake! an’ lemme tell yo’ how ’tis!”

He led the horse out into the light where he could see the woman plainly and told her to go ahead. When she had finished her story he stood silent a moment. Then he said, “You know, Big Un, it’s funny, but I don’t believe you’re lying. I think you’re just about that damned a fool.” Then he asked, “This the first time you been in town?”

“Yes, Boss. I swear tuh Gawd.”

He fairly snapped his answer at her: “Well, git out o’ it damn quick! An’ I ain’t seen no woman nor wagon since suppertime, I don’t care what the hell anybody says.”

He turned and walked briskly away. In a moment he had rounded the nearest corner, and his footfalls were fading into silence.

Hagar must get to Mamba now. That was the only thing to do. Her own mind had stopped working. She had to cross the city in a diagonal direction, and it was more instinct than conscious judgment that selected the deserted byways and alleys for her passage. But luck was with her--luck and a sharp retrenchment in the police department with a resultant cut in personnel--and she traversed the distance without being again in jeopardy. Finally, just before day, she drove the wagon into the court in East Bay Street.

She routed out a startled friend and sent her to wake and fetch Mamba; then sat waiting like a child who knows that she has done wrong and will be punished.

An hour after the old woman came cursing into the court arrangements were complete. The wagon had been washed down until it was scarcely recognisable as the mud-covered country vehicle; a half-grown boy had been engaged at an honorarium of two dollars to drive it over and deliver it to the commissary, and a fisherman had contracted, for the sum of three dollars, to row Baxter around the city and across the river where she would be within safe walking distance of the mines.

Mamba peered from the gateway and scanned the street. It was absolutely empty, its air astir with that indefinable thrill of expectancy which is the precursor of dawn. There was silence save for the far panting of a freight engine. Growling bitterly over the injustice of a fate that had imposed such a daughter upon her, the old woman conducted the culprit across the street and to the pier head. At the foot of a ladder a boat could be discerned, its rower waiting with oars ready.

Silently Baxter descended and took her seat. In the moment of departure, the old face, hanging above her against the thinning night, softened, and the deep-timbred voice said gently, “Good-bye, Daughter. Fuh Gawd’ sake take care ob yo’self an’ keep out ob trouble.”

The oars dipped, and Baxter was once again out of the city. Behind her the night seemed to cower suddenly down into the narrow streets and beneath the dock. Far out beyond Fort Sumter a new day lifted, washed and shining, from the Atlantic. The oarsman pulled steadily ahead. Above the crouching woman, and looming fabulously into the morning skies, hung the great Battery mansions, their high-flung columns and façades showing rose and saffron in the young day. To her left the “mosquito fleet” was putting to sea for its day at the fishing banks, sailing straight into the eye of the rising sun, and, under Baxter’s dazzled gaze, seeming to founder and vanish eastward in a flood of intolerable glory. Close by her now, where she could touch them with her hand, small, plangent waves sprang up and caught the light. She looked for a long moment, lifted out of herself by the splendour; then her large bullet head fell forward on her crossed arms.

“Sweet Jedus,” she muttered, “in a worl’ like dis, why Yo’ gots to make me such a damn’ fool!”

The oarsman pulled doggedly ahead toward the distant line of trees.

PART III