"Tha's it!" said Turpentine softly. "He don' say nothin'. Oomm! He min' wukkin'."
We went on now jogging steadily, rather to the west than north, and the sand ridges, that had lain along between creek and creek, disappeared from the landscape. It was a continuous swampy country, a wall of reeds and matted briars on either side of the road, and great, gloomy trees standing apart, with mosses hanging. In breaks of the reeds there would be black pools, and creeks like ditches for the stillness of the water, secret, furtive, with twisted knees of cypress root sticking out of the banks, and half-sunken logs, from which the turtles plumped off solidly. The moss dripped, the very air was wet. The wind made always a hissing in the reeds.
The road was bad, full of deep holes, and sometimes made of uncertain logs, which the mules tiptoed over in an experienced manner. I learned to roll about with the waggon. Turpentine swung on his barrel like a weathervane, and seemed often to be going off into the reeds.
It grew dark, and the stars came out. The frogs were gulping about us. Turpentine crawled down from his barrel grumbling, and pulled out a blanket from below the seat; and I was glad to take a corner of it and be friendly, though neither of us made conversation, being fretful with the cold and damp.
So we went on many hours, all for the most part silently, and at last--but how late I do not know--drew up beside a house. Two or three other buildings were near, standing blackly in the night. There was a huge negro with a lantern, and a white man, lean and tall, who said, "Howdy, Tommy." And after that I lay down somewhere on a corn-husk mattress, fever and aches for company, not thinking where we might be, or knowing till morning that we were come to the great canal.
I sat up in the dim morning, and looked about. It was a small, low room. Calhoun lay on a mattress against the door. It struck me with wonder and some shame, how careful he was, how watchful of little things. Yet for this matter, it seemed to me, if Mr. Todd had wished to make us prisoners there, he would have had no need to surprise us in the night.
Presently there were noises outside, and, when Calhoun woke, we rose and opened the door, which led into a kind of kitchen where a young woman in a neat apron was cooking. Outdoors we found Turpentine and the black giant I had seen the night before unloading the waggon into a canal boat, somewhat small, perhaps forty feet long. For the broad canal ran close to the house, with a wet, slippery tow path beside it. Mr. Todd was down in the hold of the boat, which seemed well laden, and, as I judged, for the most part, with garden stuff, fish in barrels, and vegetables in bags. But the middle of it was free for living in. I made out, by peering in, a pile of corn husks and straw for sleeping, and a stove with the pipe wired along, to take the smoke to where it could float up freely through the scuttle. The scuttle door was lifted back on hinges, and a padlock hung from it. A ladder ran down inside.