tree from above, and
climbing higher, like a cat, he worked the point of the lever downwards
into the now crooked staple, and threw himself out of the tree against
the sapling, which bent like a bow nearly double, but would not break,
and, as the staple yielded and flew out, the chain and the deliverer
fell together on the soft pine litter.

"Hark!" exclaimed a voice through the woods.

"What was it?" asked another voice.

"Come!" Phoebus murmured, and gathered together the woman, the child,
and the chain and ball, and stepped, long and silent as a rabbit's
leaps, through the awe-hushed pines, carrying the whole burden on his
shoulders.

He sat them in the scow, which sank to the edges, and, covered by a
protruding point of woods, pushed off into the deep river, yet guiding
the frail vessel in to the sides of the stream, away from the influence
of the out-running tide. As the scow turned the first crease or elbow in
the river, it began to sink.

"If you make a sound you are a slave fur life," whispered the waterman,
as he slipped overboard and began to swim, with his hand upon the stern.
As he did this, straining every muscle of his countenance to keep
afloat, the wound in his cheek began to bleed again, and he felt his
strength going. Down, down he began to settle, till the water reached
his nostrils, and the woman heard him sigh as he was sinking:

"I'd do it--an' die--agin--fur--Ellenory. God bless her!"

The scow, now full of water, turned upside down, and threw mother and
child into the stream, and the child was gone beneath the surface before
the woman could catch herself upon a sunken branch of an imbedded tree;
and, as she gasped there, the body of the pungy captain swept past her
and she caught him by the hair, and he clutched her with the drowning
instinct, and down they went together, like husband and wife, in
nature's contempt of distinctions between living worms.

They went down to the very bottom, but not to drown; for the old tree,
having fallen where it grew in other years, was sustained upon its
limbs, and made an invisible yet sure pathway to the shore. The long
chain and the iron ball fettered to the colored woman's foot, however,
deprived her for a few moments of all power to step along the slippery,
submerged trunk, and, with her soul full of agony for her child, which
she no longer saw, she was about to let go of her deliverer's body and
throw herself also into the river, to die with them,