Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/312

 his hands bound behind him. "He was a man of most powerful and athletic frame, verging on old age, with an enormous bushy beard, weak, apparently from his wounds, and almost fainting, so that it seemed with great difficulty that he kept erect; yet, in spite of his feebleness and captivity, and the vengeful glances mixed with occasional curses, which his captors directed at him, still preserving, in a certain haughty and dogged aspect of defiance, the look of one who had been long accustomed to liberty.

There was another captive in the company on foot, with a rope round his neck fastened to the saddle of one of the white men, of a lighter color than the mounted prisoner, barefoot and bareheaded, as was the other, and with very scanty clothing. He did not. appear to be wounded; but his back was all cut and bleeding, as if he had just undergone a most severe flagellation, and his [sic]woful, supplicating, subdued look made the sullen, defiant air of bis fellow-captive on horseback the more remarkable.

Riding up by the side of the mounted master of the hounds, who brought up the rear of this strange cayalcade, I inquired what had happened. It was apparent from his manner and language, notwithstanding the rude company in which I found him, that he was a person of cultivation, not unaccustomed to civilized society. Indeed, it soon appeared that he was the owner of a neighboring plantation, who, with some of his friends and neighbors, and other rougher professional assistants, engaged for the occasion, had been out on a grand slave hunt. The dead man they were bringing back was, he told me, no other than his own overseer.

This overseer was, he said, a very smart, driving fellow, a Yankee, who had first visited that part of the country as a pedler, but who had afterwards turned schoolmaster, and then overseer. It was generally observed, that these Yankee overseers would contrive to get the most work out of the people, and being somewhat in debt, he had employed him on that