His conductor led the way down back of the great house, and past a clustered group of cabins, in front of which a number of negro children played like monkeys, half naked and bareheaded, who stopped their antics and stood in the sun, and watched Jack as he passed, while some negro women came to the doors and stood also watching him.
“Won’t you tell me where I’m going to be taken?” said Jack, quickening his steps so as to come up alongside of his conductor.
“You’re going with Mr. Richard Parker,” said the man. “I reckon he’ll be taking you down to the Roost with him.”
“The Roost?” said Jack, “and where is the Roost?”
“Why, the Roost is Mr. Parker’s house. It’s some thirty or forty mile down the river.”
As they were speaking they had come out past a group of trees at the end of the great house, and upon the edge of the slope. From where they were they looked down to the shore of the river, and upon a large flat-boat with a great square sail that lay at the landing place, a rod or so away. There was a pile of bags, and a lot of boxes and bundles of various sorts lying upon the wharf in the sun. Three or four negro men were slowly and indolently carrying the bags aboard the flat-boat.
“Are we going down the river in that boat?” asked Jack, as he descended the slope at the heels of the other.
On the bank at the end of the wharf was a square brick building, in the shade of which stood Mr. Simms and Mr. Parker, the latter smoking a cigarro. Mr. Simms held in his hand a slip of paper, upon which he kept the tally of the bags as they were carried aboard. Jack went out along the wharf, watching the negro men at work, until Mr. Simms called out: “Get aboard the boat, young man.” Thereupon he stepped into the boat, climbing over the seats to the bow, where he settled himself easily upon some bags of meal, and whence he watched the slow loading of the boat.
At last everything was taken aboard. “We’re all ready now, Mr. Simms,” called out the man who had brought Jack down from the storehouse.
Mr. Parker and Mr. Simms came down the wharf together. Mr. Parker stepped aboard the scow, and immediately it was cast loose and pushed off from the landing.
“Good-by, Mr. Parker, sir,” called Mr. Simms across the widening stretch of water, and he lifted his hat as he spoke. Mr. Parker nodded a brief reply. The boat drifted farther and farther away with the sweeping stream as the negro rowers settled themselves in their places, and Mr. Simms still stood on the wharf looking after them. Then the oars creaked in the rowlocks and the head of the boat came slowly around in the direction intended. Jack, lying upon and amid the meal bags, looked out astern. Before him were the naked, sinewy backs of the eight negro oarsmen, and away in the stern sat the white man—he was the overseer of the North Plantation—and Mr. Parker, who was just lighting a fresh cigarro. Presently the oars sounded with a ceaseless chug, chug, in the rowlocks, and then the overseer left the tiller for a moment and came forward and trimmed the square, brown sail, that now swelled out smooth and round with the sweep of the wind. The rugged, wooded shores crept slowly past them, and the now distant wharf and brick buildings, and the long front of the great house perched upon the slope, dropped further and further astern. Then the flat-boat crept around the bend of the river, and house and wharf were shut off by an intervening point of land.