Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/206

 and was obliged to turn into the field again, and perform my task like the other hands, I cannot say that I much regretted it. It was a pitiful and sorry office, which no one but a scoundrel ever ought to undertake.

I now united myself more closely to the party of Thomas, and joined heart and hand in all their enterprises. Our depredations became at last so considerable, that Mr Martin was obliged to establish a regular watch, consisting of his drivers and a few of their subordinates, who kept prowling about the plantation all night, and made it unsafe to venture into the fields. This arrangement was hastened by a circumstance that happened upon the plantation, about which a very strict inquiry was instituted, but which led to no definite result. On one and the same night, general Carter's splendid plantation-seat, and his expensive rice mills were discovered to be on fire; and notwithstanding all efforts to save them, both were totally consumed. Several of the slaves, and Thomas among the rest, were put to a sort of torture to make them acknowledge some participation in this house-burning. That cruelty availed nothing. They all stoutly denied knowing any thing about it. I was, as I have said, very much in Thomas's confidence; yet he never spoke to me about that fire. As he was one of those men who know how to keep their own secrets, I always suspected that he knew much more about the matter than he chose to divulge.

At all events, it was evidently a much more potent feeling, than the mere love of plunder by which Thomas was actuated. Since his wife's death, he sometimes drank to excess; but this was seldom, and there never was a man more temperate in his meats and drinks, or less fastidious than Thomas generally was. He had formerly dressed with much neatness; now he neglected his dress altogether. He did not love society; he had little intercourse with any body except with me; and it was not always that he seemed to wish even for my company. Thomas had little use for his share of the plunder; and in fact, he generally distributed it among his companions.

When the thing was first proposed, he seemed to have little inclination to extend our depredations beyond the