s
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
sha