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In the mood of the men tragedy was inevitable unless both of us kept cool. What would be the ending of a fray between two white men and many armed blacks, some of whom were aching under a prolonged, however inconsequent, grievance against a white family? "Look here, Dan. Leave those fellows alone," I said firmly but quietly. "There'll be sorrow for some if you begin a row."
The advocates of useful education for the degraded race had more to say about training in the mechanic arts. Such instruction, however, was not then a new thing to the blacks of the South, for they had from time immemorial been the trustworthy artisans of that section.
There were far more blacks than whites down on Bay Street, but here there were nothing but blacks on every side. The wood of the cabins most of them neat enough and pleasantly situated in their little gardens of bananas and cocoa-nut palms was black, as with age or coal dust; and the very foliage, in its suggestion of savage scenes in one's old picture-books, suggested "natives."
While I am on the subject of population I should explain though the point is not one which concerns the present argument that the numbers given, as they regard the South, include both the whites and the blacks, the free men and the slaves.
Provisions were brought in, and gunpowder and shot manufactured, while the drilling of the men went on as energetically as at first. White men, Indians, and blacks, all seemed to take a real pleasure in their duties.
It happened that, at the moment when Kohlhaas came out of the chapel, a young servant, one of the retainers of the castle, came hurrying upon his way to get the Squire's chargers out of a large stone stable which was threatened by the flames. Kohlhaas, who at that very moment spied his two blacks in a little shed roofed with straw, asked the man why he did not rescue the two blacks.
But it was not all noise, for the Snider bullets swept among the crowded body of blacks, mowing them down in considerable numbers. In two minutes the Ashantis turned and ran.
For, even while Lethbridge had been speaking, the blacks had gathered, to the extent of some three or four hundred, each armed with shield and spears, supplemented in many cases by heavy clubs with big knotted heads thickly studded with formidable spikes, and were now arranging themselves in a kind of crescent formation, as though to attack and surround the four white men.
As soon as the captain and king had gone back from the bank, my companion shifted a little nearer; and in a low, muttering voice that could not be heard by the rest, thus addressed me: "No help for't, my lad sold you for six blacks. Go along wi' king pretend to go willin', or they'll tie you.
My rifle can carry farther than their throwing-sticks, a fact of which they are well aware." We soon lost sight of the blacks, and after riding on several miles further, our friend told us that he must bid us farewell, promising, however, to ride over to Mr Strong's station, should he find he could leave home, to see how we were getting on.
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