Page:Recollections of a Rebel Reefer.pdf/35

 Rh Suddenly, to my horror, one of the white specters, in a sheet, his disfigured face plastered over with flour, staggered toward my hiding-place, and before I could run away from the hideous object it extended its arms toward me and quietly said, "Don't be afraid, Jimmie. It me, Mr. Cheatham. I am dying—hold my hand!" And he sank upon the turf beside me. Although dreadfully frightened, I managed between sobs to ask the question uppermost in my mind: "Can you tell me where I can find my father and mother?" The ghostlike man only replied with a cry which seemed to wrench his soul from his body. He shivered for an instant, and then lay still. A slave passing by pointed to the body and casually remarked, "He done dead."

A Creole negro woman then came running toward me; she was stout and almost out of breath, but was still able to shout out to me in her native patois: "Mo cherche pour toi partout; M'sieur La Noue dit que to vinit toute suite!" When I found "Brother Charlie," he was ministering to the maimed, but found time to tell me that my parents had taken another boat which had stopped at Baton Rouge in the night and thereby had saved their lives. I returned at once to my home, where I was comforted in the strong arms of Katish, my old black nurse. Katish was a character whose fame was known far and wide through the little town. She was a strapping big woman who weighed over two hundred pounds, but as active as a young girl. She had been my mother's maid before my mother was married and afterwards had nursed and bossed all of her children. I being the youngest was, of course, her special pet. She ran the establishment to suit my father's and mother's comfort and convenience and ruled the children and the slaves to suit herself; but we all loved her, and no other hand could soothe a fevered child's pillow as could the black hand of Katish. When we were ill she never seemed to sleep, but sat by our bedsides until