CHAPTER XXVII.

ENGEDI

THE question may occur to our readers, why a retreat which appeared so easily accessible to the negroes of the vicinity in which our story is laid, should escape the vigilance of hunters.

In all despotic countries, however, it will be found that the oppressed party become expert in the means of secrecy. It is also a fact that the portion of the community who are trained to labor enjoy all that advantage over the more indolent portion of it which can be given by a vigorous physical system, and great capabilities of endurance. Without a doubt, the balance of the physical strength of the South now lies in the subject race. Usage familiarizes the dwellers of the swamp with the peculiarities of their location, and gives them the advantage in it that a mountaineer has in his own mountains. Besides, they who take their life in their hand exercise their faculties with more vigor and clearness than they who have only money at stake; and this advantage the negroes had over the hunters.

Dred's "strong hold of Engedi," as we have said, was isolated from the rest of the swamp by some twenty yards of deep morass, in which it was necessary to wade almost to the waist. The shore presented to the eye only the appearance of an impervious jungle of cat-brier and grapevine rising out of the water. There was but one spot on which there was a clear space to set foot on, and that was the place where Dred crept up on the night when we first introduced the locality to our readers' attention.

The hunters generally satisfied themselves with exploring more apparently accessible portions; and, unless betrayed by those to whom Dred had communicated the clue, there was very little chance that any accident would ever disclose the retreat.

Dred himself appeared to be gifted with that peculiar faculty of discernment of spirits which belonged to his father, Denmark Vesey, sharpened into a preternatural intensity by the habits of his wild and dangerous life. The men he selected for trust were men as impenetrable as himself, the most vigorous in mind and body on all the plantations.

The perfectness of his own religious enthusiasm, his absolute certainty that he was inspired of God, as a leader and deliverer, gave him an ascendency over the minds of those who followed him, which nothing but religious enthusiasm ever can give. And this was further confirmed by the rigid austerity of his life. For all animal comforts he appeared to entertain a profound contempt. He never tasted strong liquors in any form, and was extremely sparing in his eating; often fasting for days in succession, particularly when he had any movement of importance in contemplation.

It is difficult to fathom the dark recesses of a mind so powerful and active as his, placed under a pressure of ignorance and social disability so tremendous. In those desolate regions which he made his habitation, it is said that trees often, from the singularly unnatural and wildly stimulating properties of the slimy depths from which they spring, assume a goblin growth, entirely different from their normal habit. All sorts of vegetable monsters stretch their weird, fantastic forms among its shadows. There is no principle so awful through all nature as the principle of growth. It is a mysterious and dread condition of existence, which, place it under what impediment or disadvantage you will, is constantly forcing on; and when unnatural pressure hinders it, develops in forms portentous and astonishing. The wild, dreary belt of swamp-land which girds in those states scathed by the fires of despotism is an apt emblem,

in its rampant and we might say delirious exuberance of vegetation, of that darkly struggling, wildly vegetating swamp of human souls, cut off, like it, from the usages and improvements of cultivated life.

Beneath that fearful pressure, souls whose énergy, welldirected, might have blessed mankind, start out in preternatural and fearful developments, whose strength is only a portent of dread.

The night after the meeting which we have described was one, to this singular being, of agonizing conflict. His psychological condition, as near as we can define it, seemed to be that of a human being who had been seized and possessed, after the manner related in ancient fables, by the wrath of an avenging God. That part of the moral constitution, which exists in some degree in us all, which leads us to feel pain at the sight of injustice, and to desire retribution for cruelty and crime, seemed in him to have become an absorbing sentiment, as if he had been chosen by some higher power as the instrument of doom. At some moments the idea of the crimes and oppressions which had overwhelmed his race rolled in upon him with a burning pain, which caused him. to cry out, like the fated and enslaved Cassandra, at the threshold of the dark house of tyranny and blood.

This sentiment of justice, this agony in view of cruelty and crime, is in men a strong attribute of the highest natures; for he who is destitute of the element of moral indignation is effeminate and tame. But there is in nature and in the human heart a pleading, interceding element, which comes in constantly to temper and soften this spirit and this element in the divine mind, which the Scriptures represent by the sublime image of an eternally interceding high priest, who, having experienced every temptation of humanity, constantly urges all that can be thought in mitigation of justice. As a spotless and high-toned mother bears in her bosom the anguish of the impurity and vileness of her child, so the eternally suffering, eternally interceding love of Christ bears the sins of our race. But the Scriptures tell us

that the mysterious person, who thus stands before all worlds as the image and impersonation of divine tenderness, has yet in reserve this awful energy of wrath. The oppressors, in the last dread day, are represented as calling to the mountains and rocks to fall on them, and hide them from the wrath of the LAMB. This idea had dimly loomed up before the mind of Dred, as he read and pondered the mysteries. of the sacred oracles; and was expressed by him in the form of language so frequent in his mouth, that "the Lamb was bearing the yoke of the sins of men." He had been deeply affected by the presentation which Milly had made in their night meeting of the eternal principle of intercession and atonement. The sense of it was blindly struggling with the habitual and overmastering sense of oppression and wrong. When his associates had all dispersed to their dwellings, he threw himself on his face, and prayed, “O, Lamb of God, that bearest the yoke, why hast thou filled me with wrath? Behold these graves! Behold the graves of my brothers, slain without mercy, and, Lord, they do not repent! Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity. Wherefore lookest thou upon them that deal treacherously, and holdest thy tongue when the wicked devoureth the man that is more righteous than he? They make men as fishes in the sea, as creeping things that have no ruler over them. They take them up with the angle. They catch them in their net, and gather them in their drag. Therefore they rejoice and are glad. Therefore they sacrifice unto their net, and burn incense unto their drag, because by them their portion is fat, and their meat plenteous. Shall they, therefore, empty their net, and not spare continually to slay the nations? Did not he that made them in the womb make us? Did not the same God fashion us in the womb? Doubtless thou art our Father, though Abraham be ignorant of us, and Israel acknowledgeth us not. Thou, O God, art our Father, our Redeemer. Wherefore forgettest thou us forever, and forsakest us so long a time? Wilt thou not judge between us and our enemies? Behold, there is none among

How long wilt thou

them that stirreth himself up to call upon thee, and he that departeth from evil maketh himself a prey. They lie in wait, they set traps, they catch men, they are waxen fat, they shine, they overpass the deeds of the wicked, they judge not the cause of the fatherless; yet they prosper, and the right of the needy do they not judge. Wilt thou not visit for these things, O Lord? Shall not thy soul be avenged on such a nation as this? endure? Behold under the altar the souls of those they have slain! They cry unto thee continually. How long, O Lord, dost thou not judge and avenge? Is there any that stirreth himself up for justice? Is there any that regardeth our blood? We are sold for silver; the price of our blood is in thy treasury; the price of our blood is on thine altars! Behold, they build their churches with the price of our hire! Behold, the stone doth cry out of the wall, and the timber doth answer it. Because they build their towns with blood, and establish their cities by iniquity. They have all gone one way. There is none that careth for the spoilings of the poor. Art thou a just God? When wilt thou arise to shake terribly the earth, that the desire of all nations may come? Overturn, overturn, and overturn, till he whose right it is shall come!"

Such were the words, not uttered continuously, but poured forth at intervals, with sobbings, groanings, and moanings, from the recesses of that wild fortress. It was but a part of that incessant prayer with which oppressed humanity has besieged the throne of justice in all ages. We who live in ceiled houses would do well to give heed to that sound, lest it be to us that inarticulate moaning which goes before the earthquake. If we would estimate the force of almighty justice, let us ask ourselves what a mother might feel for the abuse of her helpless child, and multiply that by infinity.

But the night wore on, and the stars looked down serene and solemn, as if no prayer had gone through the calm, eternal gloom; and the morning broke in the east resplendent.