And there, along the low
bluff of the Kill, still lay the shingle-boarded town of Lewes, in the
torpor of nearly two hundred years, or since the Dutch De Vries had
settled it in 1631. Lord Delaware, Argall, and the Swede, Penn,
Blackbeard, Paul Jones, Lord Rodney, a thousand heroes, had known it
well; the pilots, like sea-gulls, had their nests there; the Marylanders
had invaded it, the Tories had seized it, pirates had been suckled
there; and now the courts and lawyers had forsaken it, to go inland to
Georgetown.
"Virgie," said Samson, "I'll try to buy some of de stone-boat captains
to carry you to Phildelfy."
He waded the Kill, carrying her, and left her in an old Presbyterian
church at the skirt of Lewes, and procured medicine for her, and then
labored in vain nearly all day to get her passage to a free state. The
reply was invariable: "Can't take the risk of the whippin'-post and
pillory for no nigger. Can't lose a long job like bringin' stone to the
Breakwater to save one nigger."
At the hotel a colored man beckoned Samson aside--a fine-looking man, of
a gingerbread color--and they went into the little old disused
court-house, in the middle of a street, where there was a fire.
"Brother," said the stranger, "I see by your actions that you're trying
to git a passage North. Is it fur yourself?"
"No," Samson said, taking an inventory of the other's fine chest and
strength, and mentally wishing to have a chance at him; "I'm a free man,
and kin go anywhere; but I have a friend.
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