Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/321

 too strongly impressed upon my mind ever to be forgotten, of my old friend and compatriot of twenty years before. I had expected it; yet what an agony shot through my heart to know it! It was necessary, however, to control myself, and I did. I spoke a few words, when, satisfied by my tone and look that I felt a sympathy for him, he laid aside, for a moment, that air of proud defiance with which, like a lion in the toils, he had glanced round on the crowd, and with a tone of entreaty begged me fora drink of water. By the promise of half a dollar, I induced one of the negroes to bring me a large gourd full; but just as the wounded prisoner was slowly raising it with his manacled arms to his lips,a well-dressed white man struck it with a stick which he held in his hand, and dashed it to the ground. I could not refrain from some words of protest against this piece of wanton cruelty; but the man with the stick turned upon me with a volley of oaths, inquired who I was, that dared to comfort this infernal negro murderer, and by drawing the eyes of the company upon me as a stranger, began to make my position very uncomfortable.

Just at this moment we heard a loud shout at the tavern door, at no great distance, followed up by a vigorous fight and a great uproar, as it seemed, between two parties into which the crowd assembled there had become divided. This drew off all those who had collected about the prisoners, except the negro man who had brought the water, and who still stuck by, to keep me in remembrance of the half dollar; and by the promise to double it, I succeeded in obtaining another gourd full, from which my poor captured friend was enabled without interruption to quench his feverish thirst. As he dropped the empty gourd, he turned to me an eye of acknowledgment. Thank Heaven, that in his distress and extremity, I was enabled to do for him even so much as this!

Incapable as I was of affording any succor, I felt