Part 40 (2/2)

He had scarcely resumed his progressive movement, which had to be accomplished very much after the fas.h.i.+on of a serpent--for the aperture was too narrow for the regular exercise of his legs and arms--he had scarcely begun to move before voices in the cellar announced the approach of the pursuers. A cold sweat seemed to deluge his frame; for the sounds were like the knell of doom to him. With desperate energy he continued his serpent march; but it was only to b.u.t.t his head against the stones of the drain, where its size was reduced to less than half its proportions near the cellar.

His farther advance was hopelessly checked; and there was nothing more to be done but to wait patiently the result of the exciting event. He was satisfied that his feet were not within eight or ten feet of the cellar; for, being a progressive young man, he had entered the hole head first.

It was possible, but not probable, that he might escape detection, even if the opening was examined; and, with what self-possession he could muster for the occasion, he lay, like the slimy worms beneath him, till ruin or safety should come.

”I reckon he isn't down here,” said the sergeant, after the party had examined the cellar, and even pulled over some of the boxes and barrels.

”G.o.d bless you for a stupid fellow as you are!” thought Somers; for he was prudent enough not audibly to invoke benedictions, even upon the heads of his enemies; but the words of the sergeant afforded him a degree of relief, which no one, who has not burrowed in a drain in the rebel country, can understand or appreciate.

”I reckon there's a place down in that corner that's big enough to hold a man; fur my son Tom's been in there,” added the farmer.

These words gave Somers another cold sweat; and perhaps he thought it was a mistake that he had not put a bullet through the patriarch's head when he had been tempted to do so in the room above. He was a double traitor; but I think the conscience of our hero was more at rest as it was than it would have been if he had shot down an unarmed man, even to save himself from prospective capture.

”Where is the place?” demanded the sergeant.

”In yonder, under them barrels and boxes. Jest fotch the trumpery out, and you'll see the hole,” replied Rigney.

Somers heard the rumble of the barrels, as they were rolled out of the way, with very much the same feelings that a conscious man in a trance would listen to the rumbling of the wheels of the hea.r.s.e which was bearing him to the church-yard, only that he was to come forth from a hopeless grave to the more gloomy light of a rebel dungeon.

”I can't see anything in that hole,” said the sergeant. ”No man could get into such a place as that.”

”Blessed are your eyes; for they see not!” thought Somers. ”May your blindness be equal to that of the scribes and Pharisees!”

”But my son Tom has been in there. I reckon a Yankee could crawl inter as small a hole as anybody.”

The sergeant thought this was funny; and he honored the remark with a hearty laugh, in which Somers was disposed to join, though he regretted for the first time in his life that he was unable to ”crawl out at the little end of the horn.” He was encouraged by the skepticism of the soldier, and was satisfied, that, if he attempted to demonstrate the proposition experimentally, he would be fully convinced of its difficulty, if not of its impossibility.

”Go and bring another lamp and a pole,” said the sergeant.

One of the party went up the stairs, and Somers gave himself up for lost.

The extra lamp would certainly expose him, to say nothing of the pole; and it seemed to be folly to remain there, and be punched with a stick, like a woodchuck in his hole. Besides, there is something in tumbling down gracefully, when one must inevitably tumble; and he was disposed to surrender gracefully, as the c.o.o.n did when he learned that Colonel Crockett was about to fire and bring him down. There was no hope; and it is bad generals.h.i.+p, as well as inhuman and useless, to fight a battle which is lost before the first shot is fired.

We have before intimated that Captain Somers, besides being a brave and enterprising young man, was a philosopher. He had that happy self-possession which enables one to bear the ills of life, as well as the courage and address to triumph over them. He had done everything which ingenuity, skill, and impudence could accomplish to save himself from the hands of the rebel soldiers; from a rebel prison, if not from a rebel halter. He had failed; and, though it gave him a bitter pang to yield his last hope, he believed that nothing better could be done than to surrender with good grace.

”How are you, sergeant?” shouted he, when he had fully resolved upon his next step.

”Hallo!” replied the sergeant, laughing heartily at the hail from the bowels of the earth. ”How are you, Yank?”

”In a tight place, sergeant; and I've concluded to back out,” replied Somers.

”Good! That's what all the Yankees will have to do before they grow much older. Back out, Yank!”

Somers commenced the operation, which was an exceedingly unpleasant necessity to a person of his progressive temperament. It was a slow maneuver; but the sergeant waited patiently till it was accomplished, by which time the extra lamp and the pole had reported for duty.

”How are you, Yank?” said the sergeant, laughing immoderately at the misfortune of his victim.

”That's the smallest hole I ever attempted to crawl through,” replied Somers, puffing and blowing from the violence of his exertions in releasing himself from his narrow prison-house.

<script>