The Complete Novels of Mark Twain and the Complete Biography of Mark Twain (208 page)

Presently we heard it coming—and coming on the jump, too; yes, and down both sides of the stream.  Louder—louder—next minute it swelled swiftly up into a roar of shoutings, barkings, tramplings, and swept by like a cyclone.

"I was afraid that the overhanging branch would suggest something to them," said I, "but I don't mind the disappointment.  Come, my liege, it were well that we make good use of our time.  We've flanked them.  Dark is coming on, presently.  If we can cross the stream and get a good start, and borrow a couple of horses from somebody's pasture to use for a few hours, we shall be safe enough."

We started down, and got nearly to the lowest limb, when we seemed to hear the hunt returning.  We stopped to listen.

"Yes," said I, "they're baffled, they've given it up, they're on their way home.  We will climb back to our roost again, and let them go by."

So we climbed back.  The king listened a moment and said:

"They still search—I wit the sign.  We did best to abide."

He was right.  He knew more about hunting than I did.  The noise approached steadily, but not with a rush.  The king said:

"They reason that we were advantaged by no parlous start of them, and being on foot are as yet no mighty way from where we took the water."

"Yes, sire, that is about it, I am afraid, though I was hoping better things."

The noise drew nearer and nearer, and soon the van was drifting under us, on both sides of the water.  A voice called a halt from the other bank, and said:

"An they were so minded, they could get to yon tree by this branch that overhangs, and yet not touch ground.  Ye will do well to send a man up it."

"Marry, that we will do!"

I was obliged to admire my cuteness in foreseeing this very thing and swapping trees to beat it.  But, don't you know, there are some things that can beat smartness and foresight?  Awkwardness and stupidity can.  The best swordsman in the world doesn't need to fear the second best swordsman in the world; no, the person for him to be afraid of is some ignorant antagonist who has never had a sword in his hand before; he doesn't do the thing he ought to do, and so the expert isn't prepared for him; he does the thing he ought not to do; and often it catches the expert out and ends him on the spot.  Well, how could I, with all my gifts, make any valuable preparation against a near-sighted, cross-eyed, pudding-headed clown who would aim himself at the wrong tree and hit the right one?  And that is what he did.  He went for the wrong tree, which was, of course, the right one by mistake, and up he started.

Matters were serious now.  We remained still, and awaited developments. The peasant toiled his difficult way up.  The king raised himself up and stood; he made a leg ready, and when the comer's head arrived in reach of it there was a dull thud, and down went the man floundering to the ground.  There was a wild outbreak of anger below, and the mob swarmed in from all around, and there we were treed, and prisoners.  Another man started up; the bridging bough was detected, and a volunteer started up the tree that furnished the bridge.  The king ordered me to play Horatius and keep the bridge.  For a while the enemy came thick and fast; but no matter, the head man of each procession always got a buffet that dislodged him as soon as he came in reach.  The king's spirits rose, his joy was limitless.  He said that if nothing occurred to mar the prospect we should have a beautiful night, for on this line of tactics we could hold the tree against the whole country-side.

However, the mob soon came to that conclusion themselves; wherefore they called off the assault and began to debate other plans. They had no weapons, but there were plenty of stones, and stones might answer.  We had no objections.  A stone might possibly penetrate to us once in a while, but it wasn't very likely; we were well protected by boughs and foliage, and were not visible from any good aiming point.  If they would but waste half an hour in stone-throwing, the dark would come to our help.  We were feeling very well satisfied.  We could smile; almost laugh.

But we didn't; which was just as well, for we should have been interrupted.  Before the stones had been raging through the leaves and bouncing from the boughs fifteen minutes, we began to notice a smell.  A couple of sniffs of it was enough of an explanation—it was smoke!  Our game was up at last.  We recognized that.  When smoke invites you, you have to come.  They raised their pile of dry brush and damp weeds higher and higher, and when they saw the thick cloud begin to roll up and smother the tree, they broke out in a storm of joy-clamors.  I got enough breath to say:

"Proceed, my liege; after you is manners."

The king gasped:

"Follow me down, and then back thyself against one side of the trunk, and leave me the other.  Then will we fight.  Let each pile his dead according to his own fashion and taste."

Then he descended, barking and coughing, and I followed.  I struck the ground an instant after him; we sprang to our appointed places, and began to give and take with all our might.  The powwow and racket were prodigious; it was a tempest of riot and confusion and thick-falling blows.  Suddenly some horsemen tore into the midst of the crowd, and a voice shouted:

"Hold—or ye are dead men!"

How good it sounded!  The owner of the voice bore all the marks of a gentleman:  picturesque and costly raiment, the aspect of command, a hard countenance, with complexion and features marred by dissipation. The mob fell humbly back, like so many spaniels.  The gentleman inspected us critically, then said sharply to the peasants:

"What are ye doing to these people?"

"They be madmen, worshipful sir, that have come wandering we know not whence, and—"

"Ye know not whence?  Do ye pretend ye know them not?"

"Most honored sir, we speak but the truth.  They are strangers and unknown to any in this region; and they be the most violent and bloodthirsty madmen that ever—"

"Peace!  Ye know not what ye say.  They are not mad.  Who are ye? And whence are ye?  Explain."

"We are but peaceful strangers, sir," I said, "and traveling upon our own concerns.  We are from a far country, and unacquainted here.  We have purposed no harm; and yet but for your brave interference and protection these people would have killed us. As you have divined, sir, we are not mad; neither are we violent or bloodthirsty."

The gentleman turned to his retinue and said calmly:  "Lash me these animals to their kennels!"

The mob vanished in an instant; and after them plunged the horsemen, laying about them with their whips and pitilessly riding down such as were witless enough to keep the road instead of taking to the bush.  The shrieks and supplications presently died away in the distance, and soon the horsemen began to straggle back.  Meantime the gentleman had been questioning us more closely, but had dug no particulars out of us.  We were lavish of recognition of the service he was doing us, but we revealed nothing more than that we were friendless strangers from a far country.  When the escort were all returned, the gentleman said to one of his servants:

"Bring the led-horses and mount these people."

"Yes, my lord."

We were placed toward the rear, among the servants.  We traveled pretty fast, and finally drew rein some time after dark at a roadside inn some ten or twelve miles from the scene of our troubles.  My lord went immediately to his room, after ordering his supper, and we saw no more of him.  At dawn in the morning we breakfasted and made ready to start.

My lord's chief attendant sauntered forward at that moment with indolent grace, and said:

"Ye have said ye should continue upon this road, which is our direction likewise; wherefore my lord, the earl Grip, hath given commandment that ye retain the horses and ride, and that certain of us ride with ye a twenty mile to a fair town that hight Cambenet, whenso ye shall be out of peril."

We could do nothing less than express our thanks and accept the offer.  We jogged along, six in the party, at a moderate and comfortable gait, and in conversation learned that my lord Grip was a very great personage in his own region, which lay a day's journey beyond Cambenet.  We loitered to such a degree that it was near the middle of the forenoon when we entered the market square of the town.  We dismounted, and left our thanks once more for my lord, and then approached a crowd assembled in the center of the square, to see what might be the object of interest.  It was the remnant of that old peregrinating band of slaves!  So they had been dragging their chains about, all this weary time.  That poor husband was gone, and also many others; and some few purchases had been added to the gang.  The king was not interested, and wanted to move along, but I was absorbed, and full of pity.  I could not take my eyes away from these worn and wasted wrecks of humanity. There they sat, grounded upon the ground, silent, uncomplaining, with bowed heads, a pathetic sight.  And by hideous contrast, a redundant orator was making a speech to another gathering not thirty steps away, in fulsome laudation of "our glorious British liberties!"

I was boiling.  I had forgotten I was a plebeian, I was remembering I was a man.  Cost what it might, I would mount that rostrum and—

Click! the king and I were handcuffed together!  Our companions, those servants, had done it; my lord Grip stood looking on.  The king burst out in a fury, and said:

"What meaneth this ill-mannered jest?"

My lord merely said to his head miscreant, coolly:

"Put up the slaves and sell them!"

Slaves!
 The word had a new sound—and how unspeakably awful!  The king lifted his manacles and brought them down with a deadly force; but my lord was out of the way when they arrived.  A dozen of the rascal's servants sprang forward, and in a moment we were helpless, with our hands bound behind us.  We so loudly and so earnestly proclaimed ourselves freemen, that we got the interested attention of that liberty-mouthing orator and his patriotic crowd, and they gathered about us and assumed a very determined attitude. The orator said:

"If, indeed, ye are freemen, ye have nought to fear—the God-given liberties of Britain are about ye for your shield and shelter! (Applause.)  Ye shall soon see. Bring forth your proofs."

"What proofs?"

"Proof that ye are freemen."

Ah—I remembered!  I came to myself; I said nothing.  But the king stormed out:

"Thou'rt insane, man.  It were better, and more in reason, that this thief and scoundrel here prove that we are
not
freemen."

You see, he knew his own laws just as other people so often know the laws; by words, not by effects.  They take a
meaning
, and get to be very vivid, when you come to apply them to yourself.

All hands shook their heads and looked disappointed; some turned away, no longer interested.  The orator said—and this time in the tones of business, not of sentiment:

"An ye do not know your country's laws, it were time ye learned them.  Ye are strangers to us; ye will not deny that. Ye may be freemen, we do not deny that; but also ye may be slaves.  The law is clear:  it doth not require the claimant to prove ye are slaves, it requireth you to prove ye are not."

I said:

"Dear sir, give us only time to send to Astolat; or give us only time to send to the Valley of Holiness—"

"Peace, good man, these are extraordinary requests, and you may not hope to have them granted.  It would cost much time, and would unwarrantably inconvenience your master—"

"
Master
, idiot!" stormed the king.  "I have no master, I myself am the m—"

"Silence, for God's sake!"

I got the words out in time to stop the king.  We were in trouble enough already; it could not help us any to give these people the notion that we were lunatics.

There is no use in stringing out the details.  The earl put us up and sold us at auction.  This same infernal law had existed in our own South in my own time, more than thirteen hundred years later, and under it hundreds of freemen who could not prove that they were freemen had been sold into lifelong slavery without the circumstance making any particular impression upon me; but the minute law and the auction block came into my personal experience, a thing which had been merely improper before became suddenly hellish.  Well, that's the way we are made.

Yes, we were sold at auction, like swine.  In a big town and an active market we should have brought a good price; but this place was utterly stagnant and so we sold at a figure which makes me ashamed, every time I think of it.  The King of England brought seven dollars, and his prime minister nine; whereas the king was easily worth twelve dollars and I as easily worth fifteen.  But that is the way things always go; if you force a sale on a dull market, I don't care what the property is, you are going to make a poor business of it, and you can make up your mind to it.  If the earl had had wit enough to—

However, there is no occasion for my working my sympathies up on his account.  Let him go, for the present; I took his number, so to speak.

The slave-dealer bought us both, and hitched us onto that long chain of his, and we constituted the rear of his procession.  We took up our line of march and passed out of Cambenet at noon; and it seemed to me unaccountably strange and odd that the King of England and his chief minister, marching manacled and fettered and yoked, in a slave convoy, could move by all manner of idle men and women, and under windows where sat the sweet and the lovely, and yet never attract a curious eye, never provoke a single remark. Dear, dear, it only shows that there is nothing diviner about a king than there is about a tramp, after all.  He is just a cheap and hollow artificiality when you don't know he is a king.  But reveal his quality, and dear me it takes your very breath away to look at him.  I reckon we are all fools. Born so, no doubt.