The voices said:
"If she's got off to Delaware, Joe Johnson won't have long to stay on
his visit; for all the beaks will gather fur him an' be started by John
M. Clayton."
"I'm sorry fur Joe," answered another voice; "he hoped to make one more
big scoop this trip, an' quit the Corners fur good."
"Let us sail by ole Ebenezer Johnson's roost at Broad Creek mouth, an'
peep up both forks of the river," said the other voice, receding; "it's
only a mile and a half. If we discover nothin', we'll run down the river
and inquire at the landings as fur as Vienny."
The colored woman now worked with all her strength to revive the
insensible sailor, rolling him, rubbing his body till her elbows seemed
almost to be dropping off, and then rubbing his great, broad breast with
her head and face and neck. She breathed into his mouth the breath
heaven vouchsafed to Hagar as bountifully as to Sarah, and, wringing out
portions of her garments and hanging them at sunny exposures to dry, she
substituted them, in her exhausted intervals, for the wet clothing of
the man; and as she worked, with a hollow, desolate heart, she sobbed:
"Lord, gi' me this man's life! O Lord, that took my chile, I will have
this life back!"
Crying and weeping, fainting and laboring, the moments, it seemed the
very hours, ran by and still he did not waken; and still, with all that
noble strength that makes the fields of white men grow and blossom under
the negro's unthanked toil, the widow and childless one fought on for
this cold lump of brother nature.
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