To-day he starts in to lead off yon poor
imbecile, Levin Dennis, and, as I expresses my opinion of it, he draws
his knife on me; so I takes my foot, Judge, that you have seen me untie
a knot with, and I spiles his wrist with it. Take care of his knife,
Levin,--he's a pore creetur without it."
"We'll have this out, nope for nope, or may I take the morning-drop!"
growled the strange man.
"That kind of language ain't understood in honest company," Jimmy
Phoebus said; "I s'pose it's thieves' lingo, used among your friends,
or, maybe, big words you bully strangers with, when you want to cut a
splurge. Now, as you've been licked by a nigger and kicked by a white
man, maybe you can understand my language! Hark you, too, nigger buyer!
Do you know where I saw you first?"
For the first time a flash of fire came from the pungy captain's black
cherries of eyes, and his huge broad face of swarthy color expressed its
full Oriental character:
"The last time I saw you, Joe Johnson, was not a-lurking in Judge
Custis's kitchen fur no good, nor a-insultin' of the Judge's t'other
visitor, Milburn of the steeple-top: it was a-huggin' the whippin'-post
on the public green of Georgetown, State of Delaware, an' the sheriff
a-layin' of it over your back; an' after he sot you up in the pillory I
took the rottenest egg I could git, an' I bust it right on the eye where
that nigger bruised you yisterday!"
The oppressive silence, as Joe Johnson slunk back, desperate with rage,
yet unable to deny, was broken by Jack Wonnell's unthinking
interjection:
"Whoop, Jimmy! Hooraw for Prencess Anne!"
"An' why did I git that egg an' make you smell it, Joe Johnson? Because,
by smoke! you was a stinkin' kidnapper, robbing of the pore free
niggers of their liberty, knowin' that they didn't carry no arms and
couldn't make no good defense! That's your trade, an' it's the meanest
an' most cowardly in the world.
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