hing could be done to revive the
insurrection, and meet again that evening at their original rendezvous.
But they never reached it.

Sadly came Nat Turner at nightfall into those gloomy woods where
forty-eight hours before he had revealed the details of his terrible
plot to his companions. At the outset all his plans had succeeded;
everything was as he predicted: the slaves had come readily at his call,
the masters had proved perfectly defenceless. Had he not been persuaded
to pause at Parker's plantation, he would have been master before now
of the arms and ammunition at Jerusalem; and with these to aid, and the
Dismal Swamp for a refuge, he might have sustained himself indefinitely
against his pursuers.

Now the blood was shed, the risk was incurred, his friends were killed
or captured, and all for what? Lasting memories of terror, to be sure,
for his oppressors; but on the other hand, hopeless failure for the
insurrection, and certain death for him. What a watch he must have kept
that night! To that excited imagination, which had always seen spirits
in the sky and blood-drops on the corn and hieroglyphic marks on the dry
leaves, how full the lonely forest must have been of signs and solemn
warnings! Alone with the fox's bark, the rabbit's rustle, and the
screech-owl's scream, the self-appointed prophet brooded over his
despair. Once creeping to the edge of the wood, he saw men stealthily
approach on horseback. He fancied them some of his companions; but
before he dared to whisper their ominous names, "Hark" or "Dred,"--for
the latter was the name, since famous, of one of his more recent
recruits,--he saw them to be white men, and shrank back stealthily
beneath his covert.

There he waited two weary days and two melancholy nights,--long
enough to satisfy himself that no one would rejoin him, and that the
insurrection had hopelessly failed. The determined, desperate spirits
who had shared his plans were scattered forever, and longer delay would
be destruction for him also. He found a spot which he judged safe, dug
a hole under a pile of fence-rails in a field, and lay there for six
weeks, only leaving it for a few moments at midnight to obtain water
from a neighboring spring. Food he had previously provided, without
discovery, from a house near by.

Meanwhile an unbounded variety of rumors went flying through the State.
The express which first reached the Governor announced that the militia
were retreating before