Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/313

 very account. But in the great ambition of Mr Jonathan Snapdragon — for such was his name — to sustain the reputation of the section of the country from which he came, he had rather overdone the matter. The price of cotton was unusually high, and in hope of making an extraordinary crop, this Yankee overseer had resolved to work a couple more acres to the hand than had ever before been attempted on that plantation. What made the matter worse, the corn, of which the crop in all that section of the country had been light the preceding year, fell short, and it became, necessary, in addition to the increased tasks, to put the people on half allowance. However, by means of a pretty liberal use of the whip, in which the Yankee overseer was a great adept, and which he seemed to take a real delight in, things had worried along till just at the pinch of the season, when it all depended upon three or four weeks of most assiduous labor, whether the weeds or the cotton should gain the ultimate [sic]ascendency. Just at this crisis of the fate of the crop, when their services were most wanted, all the prime male hands had scurvily skulked off a few nights since into the woods, leaving the overseer with the women, children, and sick, to contend against the weeds as best he could; and that, too, said my communicative planter, looking at me with the air of a most ill-treated man, and as if sure of my sympathy, with cotton at sixteen cents the pound, and promising to be higher yet by the time the crop was ready for the market.

There had, he told me, been prowling about in that neighborhood, for a great many years past, perhaps twenty or more, to the infinite annoyance of the whole country, a runaway negro, known commonly among the people as Wild Tom. He was believed to belong to old general Carter, a rich planter, of Charleston, who had long ago offered a standing reward of a thousand dollars for his capture, dead or alive. The story was, that he had run away from Loosahatchie, one of general Carter's rice plantations some distance below,