after which we accompany friend Haley, with poor Tom and some other
human cattle, in _La Belle Rivière_, a boat on the Ohio, “floating
gaily down the stream,” stuffed full of slaves, “under a brilliant
sky, _the stripes and stars of free America waving and fluttering
overhead_!” Who can read without a shudder of the young mother,
whose infant has been deceitfully sold from her–who is suddenly
told of her bereavement: “she did not scream, the shot had passed
too straight and direct through her heart for cry or tear. Dizzily
she sate down. Her slack hands fell lifeless by her side. Her eyes
looked straight forward, but she saw nothing. All the noise and the
hum of the boat, the groaning of the machinery, mingled dreamily to
the bewildered ear; and the poor dumb-stricken heart had neither
cry nor tear to show for its utter misery. She was quite calm.” In
vain, during the bright starlight solitude and silence, had poor Tom,
forgetting his own griefs–his forlorn wife and children–crawled for
a moment to her side, and tried to whisper a word of comfort from the
New Testament. Her heart was palsied; and some time afterwards the
good old slave was startled from his doze. “Something black passed
by him quickly, … he heard a splash in the water…. No one else
had seen or heard anything. He got up and searched–the woman’s
place was vacant–the poor bleeding heart was still at last, and the
river rippled and dimpled just as brightly as if it had not closed
above that heart!”–“Where alive is that gal?” said her new master,
perplexedly, in the morning, searching every corner of the boat in
vain; and then trying to make up his mind to the loss of so many
dollars’ worth, with what philosophy he might.