ardly companions in her sins was
quickly given, and the procession started through the woods and sands to
Georgetown, twelve miles to the eastward, where Patty Cannon was
received by all the town, waiting up for her, and the jail immediately
closed her in.

* * * * *

"I didn't ezackly make out what that cymlin-headed feller did it fur,"
Jimmy Phoebus remarked, in the hold of an old oyster pungy, where he
found himself with his mulatto friend and Aunt Hominy and the children,
"but the file he fetched me has done its work at last. Yer, Whatcoat,"
addressing his male fellow-prisoner, "take this knife the same feller
slipped me, an' cut these cords." Standing up free again, Mr. Phoebus
further remarked,

"Whatcoat, thar's two of us yer. By smoke! thar's three."

The docile colored man opened his eyes.

"Him!" exclaimed the sailor, indicating the feather-bed in the hold,
with its stiff, invisible contents; "Joe'll chuck him overboard down yer
about deep water somewhere. Now, for a little hokey-pokey; I think I'll
git in thar myself, an' let Joe sell t'other feller fur a nigger."

Phoebus's power over his fellow-prisoners--little children and idiotic
Hominy included--was now perfect, and he began to explore the rotten old
hold, which contained oyster-rakes, fish-lines, and the usual utensils
of a dredging-vessel, and soon discovered that there could be made a
clear passage to crawl through her from forecastle to-cabin by removing
a few boards.

"Yer, Hominy," he said, "get to work with your needle, old gal; I'm
goin' to take you home."

* * * * *

With a good start, and a fair wind and slack tide, Johnson was off
Vienna at eight o'clock.

"Ten mile to go, an' they can't catch me with a racehorse," he said,
"after I pass Chicacomico wharf, an' git abaft the marshes. I'm boozy
fur sleep. Thar's two in this crew I don't know, and I must be helmsman.
Bingavast! I'll make my nigger work his passage."

He walked to the hatchway over the hold, and, sliding it back, dropped
in, and, with a few expert blows of the professional smithy, set
Whatcoat free, merely glancing where Phoebus lay upon his face,
snoring hard.

"Cool cucumber of a bloke," Johnson said, "he'll be too much fur me in a
trade; I'll have to stifle him!" Then, ordering the mulatto man astern,
Johnson gave him the tiller, and sat near, nodding, till the second
wharf on the starboard was passe