"Thair ain't nothin' to do yer," Jimmy remarked, softly, "but jess squat down an' git a-climated, as they say about strangers to our bilious shore, an' git your eyeballs tuned to the dark. But I should say that this was both hokey-pokey an' Pangymonum, by smoke!"

A man in some part of the den was praying in a highly nervous, excited way, slobbering out his agonizing sentences, and dwelling hard upon his more open vowels, and keeping several other inmates in sympathy or equal misery, as they piped in answer to his apostrophes:

"Lawd, de-scen'! De-scen', O my Lawd. I will not let dee go; no, oh my Lawd! Come, save me! Yes, my Lawd! Come walkin' on de waters! Come outen Lazarus's tomb! Come on de chario'f fire! Come in de power! De-scen' now, O my Lawd!"

Phoebus's entrance made no excitement, and he crouched down to await the strengthening of his eyes to see around him. The place appeared to be nearly twenty-five feet square, and was cross-boarded both the gable way and under the sloping roof, whose eaves were planked up a foot or two above the floor; in the middle any man could stand upright and scarcely touch the ridge beam with his hands, but along the sloping sides could barely sit upright.

The man still continuing to express his absolute subjection of spirit in a frenzy of words, and several little children crying and shouting responsively, Phoebus ordered the man to cease, after asking him kindly to do so several times; and the command being disobeyed, he slapped the praying one with his open hand, and the poor wretch rolled over in a kind of feeble fit.

A little child somewhere continuing to cry, Phoebus took it in his arms and held between it and the starlight, at the half-open door, one of the shillings he had obtained from the old cabin on Broad Creek a few hours before. The child, seeing something shine, seized it and held fast, and Phoebus next passed his hand over the face of a sleeping man, who was snoring calmly and strenuously on the floor beside him. He made room for the faint light to shine upon the sleeper's black face, and exclaimed, in a moment:

"If it ain't Samson Hat I hope I may be swallered by a whale!"

Calling his name, "Samson! Samson!" Phoebus observed a most dejected mulatto person, who had been lying back in the shadows, crawl forward, rattling his manacles. This man, when spoken to, replied with such refinement and accuracy, however his face betokened great inward misery, that the sailor took as careful a survey of him as the moonlight permitted, coming in by that one lean attic window. He was a man who had shaved himself only recently, and his dark, curling side-whiskers and clean lips, and the tuft of goatee in the hollow of his chin, and intelligent, high forehead, seemed altogether out of place in this darksome eyrie of the sad and friendless.

"Is he your friend, sir?" asked this man, turning towards Samson. "He must have a good conscience if he is, for he slept soon after he was brought here, and has never uttered a single complaint."

"And you have, I reckon?" said the waterman.