"Where could you take her to?"
"Pennsylvany, Cannydy, Turkey, or some of them Abolition states up
thar"--Jack Wonnell indicated the North with his finger. "Ain't there no
place where a white man kin treat a bright-skinned slave like that as if
they both was a Christian?"
"No," answered Levin, "not in this world."
The hero of the bell-crowns was much affected, and Levin thought he
really was whimpering, though his vacant grin was a poor frame for
grief.
"Jack," said Levin, "if what Roxy Custis told is true, the gal is the
slave of your pertickler enemy, Meshach Milburn."
The wearer of the rival species of hat was "badly sobered," as Levin
mentally expressed it, at this dismal solution of his gentle dreams of
love. He arose and walked to the bow of the boat, and looked down into
the flying waves over which the cat-boat skipped, as if he might seek
the solution of his own disconnected yet harmless life in the bottom of
the sound, among the oyster rocks.
The water was now speckled with canoes and periaugers (pirogues), and
little sail-boats coming from Deil's Island preaching, and before them
rose out of the bay the low woody islands and capes which, with white
straits between, enclose from the long blue nave of the Chesapeake the
scalloped aisle called Tangier Sound. Like pigeons and wrens around some
cathedral, the wild-fowl flew in these involuted, almost fantastic,
architectures of archipelago and peninsula, which, lying flat to the
water, yet took ragged perspective there, as if some Gothic builder had
laid his foundations, but had not bent the tall pines together, that
grew above in palm-like groves, to make the groined roofs and arches of
his design.
Pages:
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222