Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/232

 It appeared in the course of the conversation between the landlady and her guests, that the murderous kind of attack to which our companions had fallen victims, but which had been intended for another party of runaways, is an operation occasionally practised in Lower Carolina, when a party of slave-hunters falls in with a gang of fugitive slaves too large to be easily arrested.

The dispersion of the attacking party, and each one shooting and returning by himself, is only the effect of an ancient and traditionary prejudice. By the law of Carolina, the killing a slave is regarded as murder; and though probably, this law was never enforced, and would doubtless be treated by a jury of modern slave-holders, as an old-fashioned and fanatical absurdity, there still linger, in the breasts of the people, some remains of horror at the idea of deliberate bloodshed, and a sort of superstitious apprehension of the possible enforcement of this antiquated law. To blindfold their own consciences, and to avoid-the possibility of a judicial investigation, each man of an attacking party takes care to see none of the others when they fire; and no one goes to the place to ascertain how many have been killed or disabled. The poor wretches who are not so fortunate as to be shot dead upon the spot, are left to the lingering torments of thirst, fever, starvation and festering wounds; and when at length they die, their skeletons lie bleaching in the Carolina sun, proud proofs of slave-holding civilization and humanity.

While our captors were at supper, the little girl, the landlady's daughter, came to look at us, as we lay in the passage. She was a pretty child, and her soft blue eyes filled with tears as she looked upon us. I asked her for water. She ran to get it for us; and inquired if we did not want something to eat. I told her that we were half dead with hunger; and she no sooner heard it, than she hastened away, and soon returned with a large cake of bread.

Our arms were bound so tight that we were utterly helpless, and the little girl broke the bread, and fed us with her own hand.

Is not this one instance enough to prove that nature never intended man to be a tyrant? Avarice, a blind lust of