The conventions of dress are sometimes pestilential. If any doubt this truth let him remember the nightmares wherein his nudity made torment. And, while remembering the anguish such lack of clothing has occasioned in dreams, let him think with pity on the suffering of Zeke whose plight was real. It was in sooth, a predicament to strain the savoir faire of the most polished courtier. Perhaps, the behavior of the mountaineer was as discreet as any permitted by the unfortunate circumstances, and could hardly have been improved on by the Admirable Crichton himself. He simply retained an immobile pose, facing the girl, with his whole soul concentrated in desire that the earth should split asunder to engulf him. The tide of his misery was at its flood, so that it grew no worse when some deck-hands thrust the forward doors open, and a policeman bounded into the cabin, drawn revolver in hand.

But the bull-terrier was to escape the fate unjustly inflicted on so many of its fellows. The 33 girl, crouching over the dog, barred the policeman’s purpose.

“Get away from him, miss,” the officer directed. “He ain’t safe, even if he’s quiet. I know mad dogs. A bullet’s the only medicine.”

“Chub isn’t mad in the least,” the girl snapped; “though he’s been through enough to make him crazy—and so have I. If you’re so anxious to do your duty, officer,” she added, bitterly, “why don’t you arrest that horrid, hulking man over there?” She pointed a neatly gloved, accusing finger at the motionless Zeke, who was staring fixedly at the point where he hoped the abyss might yawn.

“What’s he done?” the policeman inquired gruffly. He was miffed over this lost opportunity. The slayer of a mad dog is always mentioned as a hero in the newspapers.

The girl stood up. The dog, at the end of the leash, also stood up, and shook itself. It had, to all seeming, recovered fully. It regarded Zeke intently from its red eyes. But it did not growl. It was plain that the bull-terrier was thinking deeply, and that Zeke was the center around which thought revolved. But, if the dog did not growl, its mistress showed no lessening of hostility. She explained succinctly to the representative of the law:

“He assaulted my dog—with his feet and his hands.” 34

“And maybe he bit him, too!” the policeman suggested, with heavy sarcasm. He could not forgive this pretty girl for foiling his heroism.

The girl did not heed. Her white brow was wrinkled in a frown. She was recalling, with an effort, her somewhat meager knowledge of legal terms.

“I shall charge him with homicidal assault,” she announced firmly.

“I hope you’ll tell that to the sarge,” the officer chuckled, his pique forgotten in appreciation of the girl’s naÏve announcement. “I’ll take this chap to the station-house. You’ll appear against him, miss?” The girl nodded emphatically. He turned on Zeke, frowning. “Come on quiet, young feller, if you know what’s good for ye.” His practiced eye studied the young mountaineer’s physique respectfully.

Zeke made no movement, nor answered nor lifted his eyes. The policeman attributed this demeanor to recalcitrancy. He put the revolver in his pocket, drew his club and took a step forward. Yet, he sensed something unfamiliar in the situation; the stiff posture of the arms and hands of the culprit attracted his attention. He felt vaguely that something of a painful nature was toward. He stopped short, puzzled, and spoke: 35

“What’s the matter with ye, anyhow?” he demanded fiercely. “Hain’t ye got any tongue?”

Then, at last, Zeke raised his eyes. They went first to the forward door, to make sure that the girl had vanished. There were only two mildly interested deck-hands in the cabin, beside the policeman, though soon the place would be filled with newly arriving passengers. He looked at the officer squarely, with despair in his expression:

“Hit ain’t my tongue—hit’s my pants!” he said huskily. “Hit’s the seat of my pants. Hit’s—hit’s thar!” He nodded toward the strip of jeans left on the floor by the dog.

The policeman stared at the fragment of cloth, then his gaze returned appreciatively to the victim’s hands. He threw his head back and bellowed with laughter, echoed raucously by the deck-hands. Zeke waited grimly until the merriment lessened a little.

“I hain’t a-stirrin’ nary a step to no jail-house,” was his morose announcement, “unless somebody gits me some pants with a seat to ’em.”

The policeman liked his ease too well to fight needlessly, and he had an idea that the thews and sinews of the boomer might make a good account of themselves. Moreover, he was by way of being a kindly soul, and he apprehended in a measure the young man’s misery.

“Can you dig up a pair of jumpers?” he asked 36 the deck-hands. “You can have ’em back by calling at the station to-morrow.”

In this manner, the difficulty was bridged. Clad in the dingy and dirty borrowed garment, the burning shame fell from Zeke, and he was once again his own man. Nevertheless, he avoided looking toward the piece of torn cloth lying on the floor, as he went out with the policeman. He only wished that he might with equal ease leave behind all memory of the lamentable episode.

Zeke’s tractability increased the favorable impression already made on the officer by the mountaineer’s wholesome face and modest, manly bearing. It was evident that this was no ordinary rake-helly boomer come to town. There was, too, the black bag to witness that the prisoner was an honest voyager. On the way to the station, the constable listened with unusual patience to Zeke’s curt account of the misadventure, and the narrative was accepted as truth—the more readily by reason of some slight prejudice against the dog, which had failed as an exploiter of heroism. In consequence, the policeman grew friendly, and promised intercession in his captive’s behalf. This was the more effective when, on arrival at the station-house, it was learned that the girl with the dog had not appeared. Nor was there sign of her after a period of waiting. The sergeant at the desk decided that 37 there could be no occasion to hold the prisoner. But he frowned on the deadly weapon, which the usual search had revealed.

“’Twon’t do for you to go totin’ that cannon promiscuous,” he declared. “You shore don’t need a gun—you shore do need breeches. What’s the answer?... Hock the gun, and buy some pants.”

Thus simply did an alert mind solve all difficulties of the situation.

So in the end, Zeke issued safely from his first bout with mischance and found himself well content, for his dress now was more like that of the men about him. The new trousers were full length, which the jeans had not been, and the creases down the legs were in the latest style. The salesman had so stated, and Zeke observed with huge satisfaction that the stiffness of the creases seemed to mark the quality of the various suits visible in the streets. And his own creases were of the most rigid! Zeke for the first time in his life, felt that warm thrill which characterizes any human integer, whether high or low, when conscious of being especially well dressed.

Followed an interval of loitering. The sights of the town formed an endless panorama of wonder to the lad’s eager vision. Though he was a year past the age of man’s estate, this was his first opportunity 38 of beholding a town of any size, of seeing face to face things of which he had heard a little, had read more. His fresh, receptive mind scanned every detail with fierce concentration of interest, and registered a multitude of vivid impressions to be tenaciously retained in memory.

And ever with him, as he roamed the streets, went a tall slender girl, barefooted, garbed in homespun, with great dark brown eyes that looked tenderly on him from beneath the tumbled bronze masses of her hair. No passer-by saw her, but the mountaineer knew her constant presence, and with her held voiceless communion concerning all things that he beheld. His heart exulted proudly over the bewildering revelations of many women, both beautiful and marvelously clad in fine raiment—for this girl that walked with him was more radiantly fair than any other.

It was late afternoon when, finally, Zeke aroused himself to think of the necessities of his position. Then, after a hasty and economical meal at a lunch counter near the water-front, he made haste to the pier, where his attention was at once riveted on an Old Dominion Liner, which was just backing out into the river. He watched the great bulk, fascinated, while it turned, and moved away down the harbor, to vanish beyond Sewall’s Point, on its way toward Hampton Roads. Immediately afterward, his attention 39 was attracted to a much smaller steamer, which drew in on the opposite side of the wharf. There chanced to be no one else near, and, as the boat slid into the slip, a man in the bow hurled a coil of rope toward Zeke, with an aim so accurate that it fell across Zeke’s shoulder.

“Don’t dodge it, you lubber!” the man roared, in answer to the mountaineer’s instinctive movement. “Haul it in, an’ make fast to the punchin’.”

Zeke obeyed readily enough, hauled in the hawser, and made the loop fast over the piling. At the same moment, he saw two negroes, blacker from soot and grime than nature had made them, who leaped down from the deck, and scampered out of sight. He heard the captain in the pilot-house shouting down the tube.

“There go your––nigger stokers on the run.”

Zeke could both see and hear the man in the engine-room, who vowed profanely that he would ship a pair of white men, to sail before ten that night. It seemed to the listener that the situation might develop to his advantage. When, presently, the captain descended to the dock, Zeke made bold to accost that red-faced and truculent-appearing person. Much to his surprise, his request for work met with an amiable reply. The captain verified what Zeke already knew, that the engineer had 40 need of men, and bade the inquirer get aboard and offer himself.

In the engine-room, the harried chief scowled on the intruder.

“What the devil do you want?” he cried harshly.

But Zeke’s purpose was too earnest to be put down by mere ungraciousness.

“Work,” he replied with a smile.

Something in the applicant’s aspect mitigated the engineer’s asperity.

“Ever fire a boiler?” he questioned, more affably.

“Yes, an’ no,” Zeke answered; “not any real steam b’iler. But, when hit comes to keepin’ a hick’ry fire under a copper kittle, an’ not scorchin’ the likker, wall, I ’lows as how I kin do hit. An’ when it comes to makin’ o’ sorghum m’lasses, I hain’t never tuk off my hat to nobody yit. Fer the keepin’ o’ proper temp’rature folks says, I’m ’bout’s good’s anybody in Wilkes.”

“Humph!—boomer,” the engineer grunted, and there was silence for a moment. When next he spoke, his manner was kindly.

“Those niggers of mine skedaddled ’cause they’re lazy and worthless. But the stoke-hole is hell, all right. It ain’t no place for a youngster like you. I’ll hustle round to the gin-mills an’ get hold of a pair of tough guys. But there’s something else,” he went on, as Zeke’s face fell. “If you can make 41 sorghum molasses and moonshine without scorchin’ ’em, you’ll fill the bill, I reckon. We cruise off the coast for menhaddin—fat backs—for the oil in ’em. We carry steam-jacket kettles. I’ve got a green man now who’s no good. I’ll fire him and take you on. Thirty a month and your board—more by-and-by, if you suit.”

Zeke, elated at this opportunity, felt, nevertheless, that honesty required of him some further explanation. But the engineer dismissed consideration of the future.

“A month will give you enough for your fare to New York. If you ain’t pressed for time, a voyage will do you good. But don’t let the captain get a sight of that black bag, or it’ll go overboard. Sailors are afeared of ’em,” he chuckled. “The Neuse, my old ship, ran into The Blanche off Creek Beacon, in a fog, and sunk her. We rescued officers and crew, but the captain—Smith, his name was—couldn’t stop cussin’ ’cause he’d allowed a nigger mammy to go aboard as a passenger along with her old black bag, which was the why of the wreck, ’cording to his way of thinking. Took his friends nigh onto a year, to convince him that The Neuse was to blame for the collision. I suspect he’ll always have it on his conscience that he did finally collect damages off our owners.” The engineer 42 chuckled again. “Stow your bag under your bunk in the fore peak before the captain comes aboard.”

The Bonita was a stanchly built and seaworthy craft with a draft of less than twelve feet under full cargo, which made possible her use of the shorter and smoother inland water-way from Norfolk to Beaufort, North Carolina, where was the factory. Zeke, who would remain idle until the first catch of fish, went early to his bunk the first evening aboard, wearied by the long and exciting day. He had, indeed, scarce time to contemplate a guardian vision of Plutina ere his senses were locked in slumber, and his next consciousness was of a dim morning light struggling into the gloom of the stuffy peak, and the jolting rhythm of the engine, which announced that the voyage was begun. When he hurried on deck, he was at first disappointed to learn that the boat was still some distance from the open sea, for which he longed with all an inlander’s curiosity over the mystery of endless waters. The Bonita was now working forward slowly through the old Dismal Swamp Canal, to reach the Pasquotank River and Albemarle Sound. Zeke’s astonished eyes perceived in every direction only the level, melancholy expanse of the swamp. His sensitive soul found, nevertheless, a strange charm and beauty in the scene. There was space here, even as in the mountains. Yet this calm was not of strength, he 43 felt vaguely, like that he had known, but the tranquillity of nature in another, a weaker, less-wholesome mood, apathetic, futile. The thickly dotting cypresses and junipers, bedecked with streaming draperies of Spanish moss, touched the vistas with a funereal aspect. The languid movement of the festoons under the breeze was like the sighings of desolation made visible. The dense tangle of the undergrowth stretched everywhere, repellent, unrelieved by the vivid color flashes of the mountain blossoms. Stagnant wastes of amber-hued water emphasized the dreariness.

Zeke’s spirits were too exultant to suffer more than a fleeting depression from this first survey of the waste. He realized how unjust his impressions might be when he learned that this seemingly filthy water was highly esteemed. The deck-hand, filling the water barrel from a pail let over the ship’s side, explained the swamp water’s virtues.

“All the capens fill their barrels with it. Juniper water cures chills an’ fever, an’ keeps ’em off if ye hain’t got ’em. Some says it’s better ’n gin for the kidneys.” But the deck-hand looked doubtful.

Zeke, still suspicious because of the unlikeness of this liquid to the crystal-clear element of the mountains, essayed an experimental swallow, then spat disgustedly.

“Hit may be all right fer med’cine, or yarb tea,” 44 was his verdict, “but it needs real water to wash it down.”

The progress was tediously slow, for a strong southwest wind had come on, which lowered the water in the canal, so that The Bonita often went scraping along the bottom, and betimes stuck fast in the mud. When they were come to the Lake Drummond region, Captain Lee decided to tie up until a change or falling of the wind, with its consequent rise of water in the channel. At the point where they finally made fast to the bank, there was an old trail, a woods road long abandoned, running off into the jungle. Zeke promptly set off to explore this, and almost at once espied a wild turkey; a plump gobbler, feeding in the path before him. There could be no doubt as to the acceptability of such food aboard and Zeke hastened back to The Bonita, where the captain gladly loaned him a rifle. Thus equipped, Zeke returned to the wilderness trail. He was not surprised to find that the turkey had vanished, nor disheartened, for he was sure that a little patience would bring him in sight of game, and there was leisure a plenty since an interval must elapse after a change in the wind before the deepening of the water. Within a half-hour, he shot a turkey from its perch in a cypress. With much satisfaction, Zeke swung the gobbler, which was big and fat, over his shoulder, and set out to return. Almost at once, 45 however, his steps were arrested by the faint baying of a hound. As he listened, the sound grew louder, as if the dog drove its quarry toward him. The instinct of the chase dominated the mountaineer. He cast down the turkey, and waited, hopeful that a deer or bear might cross the path within range.

Soon, he heard a noisy crackling of underbrush a little to his right, but near at hand. With the rifle in readiness Zeke peered from the concealment of a cypress trunk. But it was neither the lithe leaping form of a deer, nor the uncouth shambling bulk of swamp bear that broke from the cover a moment later. Instead, there lurched into view a huge negro. The fugitive’s clothing hung in shreds, witness of the cat’s-briar claws; his face, from the same cause, was torn and bleeding. The breath wheezed loudly through the open mouth; the sweat ran in streams from the face; the eyes rolled whitely. There was terror in his expression. He carried a thick club. Now, as he came to a halt, it was plain to the watcher that the runner’s fear had at last driven him to make a stand, when he could flee no further. Zeke had no difficulty in understanding the situation sufficiently well. The negro was undoubtedly a criminal who had fled in the hope of refuge from the law in the swamp’s secret lurking places. Now trailed by the dog, he was brought to bay. Zeke determined, as a measure of prudence, to remain inactive 46 until the issue between man and dog should be adjusted. Otherwise, he might find himself engaged against both man and beast with only a single bullet to his aid.

The querulous cries of the dog here and there showed that the scent had been lost where the negro had splashed through some pool. Then, abruptly, a sharp volley announced recovery of the track. A minute later a huge black-and-tan body catapulted from the thicket into the open space of the trail. From his cover, Zeke watched excitedly. The negro, who had stood with club swung back ready for the blow, was caught at disadvantage by the pursuer’s emergence at an unexpected point. The branches of the thicket projected to prevent a blow. The dog, silent now, hurled itself straight at the man’s throat. But the negro, alert to the peril, avoided the charge by a swift spring to the side. Zeke heard the great jaws of the beast click shut as it shot harmlessly past its foe; he heard the savage growl with which it whirled to renew the attack. As it leaped a second time the negro’s club fell true in a mighty stroke—caught the creature fair on the skull, stopped it in midair, dropped it dead to the ground.

Zeke’s turn in the action was come, at last. Even as the negro stood gloating over his victory, the mountaineer, with leveled rifle, stepped from the 47 concealment of the cypress, and cried a sharp command:

“Drop thet-thar club, an’ stand still whar ye be, if ye don’t want to be kilt!”

The effect on the exultant negro was almost pitiful. Where had been the assurance of final escape was now the certainty of capture. The shock of contrasting emotions was too much for the fellow’s strength, coarse-fibered and hardened as he was. He stared at Zeke with protruding eyes, his face grown gray. His thrilling joy in the slaying of the dog was lost in the black despair of defeat. The club fell from the trembling fingers, and in the next moment the man himself sagged to the ground and crouched whimpering, whining, in a child-like abandon to fatigue and grief. Then, presently, while the captor watched in some perplexity, the moaning ceased. In its stead came a raucous rhythm—the sleep of utter exhaustion.

A sound of footsteps on the path caught Zeke’s ear. He turned, and saw close at hand a short, stockily built, swarthy-complexioned man of middle age, who came swinging forward at a lope. The newcomer halted at sight of the mountaineer.

“Seen anything of a big nigger or a hound passing this way?” he demanded.

Zeke nodded, gravely.

“Ye’ll find the two of ’em right thar.” He raised 48 the rifle, which the other man now observed for the first time, and with it pointed to where, beyond the cypress-tree, the negro huddled, breathing stertorously, beside the dead body of the dog.