Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/198

 any thing in the fellow's appearance that demanded any particular respect, and as I was ignorant of the Carolina etiquette, which requires from every slave an obsequious bearing towards every freeman, seldom expected in Virginia, I let my hat remain upon my head. The fellow noticed it; reimed up his jaded beast, and eyed me sharply. My complexion made him doubt whether I might not be a freeman; my dress and the company I was in, gave him equal grounds for supposing me a slave. He inquired who I was; and being told that I was one of general Carter's people, he rode towards me with his upraised whip, demanding why I did not take off my hat to him; and without waiting for an answer, he began to lay the lash over my shoulders. The fellow was evidently drunk, and my first impulse was to take the whip away from him. Luckily I did not yield to this impulse; for any attempt to resist even a drunken white man, though that resistance was only in repelling the most unprovoked attack, according to the just and equal laws of Carolina, might have cost me my life.

I learned upon inquiry that this fellow had been an overseer; but some time previous had been discharged by his employer for suspected dishonesty. Not long after, he had set up a whiskey shop about half a mile distant. From what he said to the owner of the store where we were assembled, it would seem that his shop had not been so much frequented during the holidays as he had expected; and in beating me, he had vented his drunken spite and ill humor on the first object that gave him any thing like a pretence to exercise it. I learned too, that this fellow whose name was Christie, was a cousin of Mr Martin, our overseer. They had been close friends; but had lately had a violent quarrel. Christie had stabbed Martin; and Martin had shot at Christie with his double-barrelled gun. He had taken a still more effectual revenge by doing his best to stop the trade from Loosahachee to Christie's shop, which he had formerly winked at, and which had been carried on. much to Christie's benefit, by the exchange of well watered whiskey for general Carter's rice and cotton.

I no sooner heard this account of Mr Christie, than it occurred to me that I had him in my power; and at once, I