Phoebus was a man of great power, but his antagonist was strong and slippery, too, and a spirited rough-and-tumble fighter.

The pungy captain was on top, the bandit man locked him fast in his arms and legs, and tried to stab him in the side, as Phoebus felt the handle of a clasp-knife, which seemed slow to obey its spring, strike him repeatedly all round the groin, in strokes that would have killed, inflicted by the blade.

Phoebus attempted to drag the man to the hatchway and force him down it, while the two negro assistants of Phoebus beat down the negro traitor with their chains, and searched him vainly for the knife he had filched.

At last Phoebus prevailed, and his antagonist rolled down the open hatchway, seven feet or more, still keeping his desperate hold on Phoebus, and dragging him along; and both might have cracked their skulls but for a woman just in the act of hurrying up the ladder, against whom their two bodies pitched and were cushioned upon her.

The shock, however, stunned both of them, and when Phoebus recollected himself he was tied hand and foot and lying on the garret floor again, and over him stood Joe Johnson, flourishing a cowhide.

The bandages had again been torn from Phoebus's face, and he was bleeding at the flesh-wound in his cheek, and breathless from his conflict. A woman had dashed a vessel of water into his face, and this had revived him.

The other man, called "captain," had, meantime, by the aid of this woman - the same Phoebus had seen down-stairs - subdued and tied the black insurgents, and both of them were flourishing their whips over the backs and heads of the prisoners, big and little, so that the garret was no slight reflection of the place of eternal torment, as the shadows of the monsters, under the weak light, whipped and danced against the beams and shingles, and shrieks and shouts of "Mercy!" blended in hideous dissonance.

The woman now turned her lamp on the sailor's rough, swarthy, injured countenance, and looked him over out of her dark, bold eyes:

"Joe, this is a nigger, by God!"

Johnson and the captain also examined him carefully, and, uttering an oath, the former kicked the prostrate man with his heavy boot.

"I popped this bloke last night," he said, "and thought the scold's cure had him. He's a sea-crab playin' the setter fur niggers. He sang beef to me in Princess Anne. I told him thar he'd pass for a nigger, Patty, and we'll sell him fur one to Georgey!"

"All's fish that comes to our net, Joe," the woman chuckled; "he'll sell high, too."

"That white man," spoke the voice of Samson, within the pen, his chains rattling, "has hunderds of friends a-lookin' fur him, an' you'll ketch it if you don't let him off."

"What latitat chants there?" Joe Johnson demanded of Patty Cannon.

"That's my nigger, Joe," the woman answered.

"Fetch him to the light."

The captain propped Samson up, and Joe Johnson glared into his face, and then struck him down with the handle of his heavy whip.

"Patty," he growled, "that nigger's scienced; he's the champion scrapper of Somerset. He knocked me down, and I marked him fur it; and now, by God! I'm a-goin' to burn him alive on Twiford's island."