With pain and difficulty, lessened by self-forgetfulness, she pushed the scow and the body to the foot of the tree, and, feeling around its old roots for further support, the red-eyed terrapins arose and swam around her, disturbed in their possessions; but she feared no reptiles any more, since Death, the mighty crocodile, had eaten the babe that she had nursed but this morning.

She had intelligent remembrance enough to think of all the precautions her deliverer had taken, and, when she had dragged his body on the shore into the dense, scrubby woods, she also drew out the little scow and heaped some dead brush upon it, and had scarcely concealed herself when she heard voices from the river, and the report of a sail swung around upon its boom, and of feet upon a deck. The voices said:

"If she's got off to Delaware, Joe Johnson won't have long to stay on his visit; for all the beaks will gather fur him an' be started by John M. Clayton."

"I'm sorry fur Joe," answered another voice; "he hoped to make one more big scoop this trip, an' quit the Corners fur good."

"Let us sail by ole Ebenezer Johnson's roost at Broad Creek mouth, an' peep up both forks of the river," said the other voice, receding; "it's only a mile and a half. If we discover nothin', we'll run down the river and inquire at the landings as fur as Vienny."

The colored woman now worked with all her strength to revive the insensible sailor, rolling him, rubbing his body till her elbows seemed almost to be dropping off, and then rubbing his great, broad breast with her head and face and neck. She breathed into his mouth the breath heaven vouchsafed to Hagar as bountifully as to Sarah, and, wringing out portions of her garments and hanging them at sunny exposures to dry, she substituted them, in her exhausted intervals, for the wet clothing of the man; and as she worked, with a hollow, desolate heart, she sobbed:

"Lord, gi' me this man's life! O Lord, that took my chile, I will have this life back!"

Crying and weeping, fainting and laboring, the moments, it seemed the very hours, ran by and still he did not waken; and still, with all that noble strength that makes the fields of white men grow and blossom under the negro's unthanked toil, the widow and childless one fought on for this cold lump of brother nature.

He warmed, he breathed, he groaned, he spoke!

His voice was like a happy sigh, as of one disturbed near the end of a comforting morning nap in summer:

"You thar, Mary?"

He stared around with difficulty, his wounded face now clotted and stained with blood, and his eyes next looked an inquiry so kind and apprehensive that she answered it, to save him breath:

"Baby's drowned. God does best!"

He reached his hand to hers - she was almost naked to the waist, having sacrificed all she had, the greatest of which was modesty, to bring back that life in him which came naked and unashamed into the world - and he put his little strength into the grasp.