Thirty blankets and two trade-guns—equal to about 50_£._ sterling—were the terms at last agreed on. We then adjourned to the shed where the slave was a prisoner. I was in a great state of expectation, picturing to myself an Indian Hebe, limbs exquisitely moulded, native grace and elegance in every movement, gorgeous in ‘wampum,’ paint, and waving feathers, such as I had read of as ‘Laughing Water,’ or ‘Prairie Flower.’
Being carried, so to speak, into the shed—a waif in the stream of savages rushing like a human torrent to get in—with all the breath squeezed out of me, I was deposited somewhere but as my head was enveloped in a dense cloud of pungent smoke, it was some time ere I discovered I was close to the captain. ‘Sit down,’ he roared; ‘you will die of suffocation if you keep your head in the smoke.’ At once I seated myself on the floor, and now quite understand what being suffocated in a chimney is like.
Once more enabled to see, it was easy to discover the secret: there being no place for the smoke to escape, it accumulates at the top of the shed, and one literally, not figuratively, ‘lives under a cloud.’ There was a hum and a burr, as in a nest of angry hornets; a din increased by the dogs, that fought and rolled in where I sat; and being by no means particular whether they bit my legs or any other man’s, it required unwonted agility to keep clear.
During an interval of peace, it was easy to make out that the slave was coming. Alas! how fleeting are imaginary pictures—poetic dreams—castles in the air! Half crouching, and waddling rather than walking, came my ideal; her only covering, a ragged, filthy old blanket, her face begrimed with the dirt and paint of a lifetime; short, fat, repulsive, the incarnation of ugliness, a very Hecate! All my romance vanished like a dissolving-view. For this had I been squeezed nearly to death, suffocated, poisoned with a noxious stench, my legs imperilled by infuriated curs, my ears deafened, half devoured by insatiable blood-suckers?—to aid in paying 50_£._ for the ugliest old savage eyes ever beheld!
All the chiefs assembled at the fort in the evening to receive payment, and hand over the slave. Squatting on their heels, nose and knees together, their backs against the wall, they formed a circle. The pipe produced (nothing can be done without it); I say pipe, for _one_ only is used; filled and lighted, it passes from mouth to mouth; each, taking a good pull, puffs the smoke slowly from his nostrils. The thirty blankets and two guns being piled in the centre of this strange assemblage, the slave was led in. Each blanket underwent a most careful inspection; the guns, snapped and pointed, were finally approved of. A husky grunt, from each of the council, denoting general approval, the guns and blankets were carried off in triumph, and we became the fortunate possessors of this strange purchase.