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Quashie, seeing no better terms to be had, accepts the bargain, and goes to work accordingly.
Quashie started up, and accompanied the young gentleman without further questioning. Glad as Mr Pemberton was to get his son and young friends back again, he was made very anxious on hearing of the state of affairs at Bellevue.
It may seem a paradox to say that a slaveholder does not make his slaves work by force, but by agreement. And yet it is true. There is a contract between the two which, if it were written out, would run in these terms: "I undertake to feed, clothe, house, and not to kill, flog, or otherwise maltreat you, Quashie, if you perform a certain amount of work."
We must take care in the mean time that the rebels do not see him, or they will know that by some means or other he got in, and will be on the watch for him. We may depend on Pemberton's carrying out his plan, and I should advise that the attempt be made in the night-time." Quashie was rather disappointed at finding that he was not to set off at once, as he was eager to get his dollar.
Though the worthy planter talked and went about trying to keep up the spirits of others, he felt his own sinking when darkness came on, and no troops appeared. Quashie was sent for, and Mrs Pemberton secured the note, done up, as proposed, in his woolly head. She had written it at her husband's dictation, in a small, delicate hand, so that it occupied little more space than a quill.
The highwayman gives up his freedom to shoot me, on condition of my giving up my freedom to do as I like with my money: I give up my freedom to kill Quashie, on condition of Quashie's giving up his freedom to be idle.
Quashie ran on along the well-accustomed road till he got near his own village, when, taking off the few clothes he wore, he did them up in a bundle and stowed them away in the hollow of a tree to be ready for his return, leaving only a piece of black stuff round his waist, with which Mrs Pemberton had supplied him at his request.
Before any desperate enterprise was undertaken to afford relief to their friends, it was important to ascertain how much they required it. "I will try what can be done by means of Quashie, the boy Jack just now brought in," said Mr Pemberton.
"We have food sufficient for another day," remarked Lieutenant Belt; "before the end of that time, relief may be sent to us." "But should it not come, what then are we to do?" inquired Mr Ferris. "Act as our friend Pemberton suggests," said Mr Twigg. "To-morrow evening, as soon as it is dark, we will send off Quashie.
Then the grenadier company, composed of white clerks of the place, very fine looking young men indeed another white company followed, not quite so smart looking then came a century of the children of Israel, not over military in appearance the days of Joshua, the son of Nun, had passed away, the glory had long departed from their house, a phalanx of light browns succeeded, then a company of dark browns, or mulattoes; the regular half and half in this, as well as in grog, is the best mixture after all, then quashie himself, or a company of free blacks, who, with the browns, seemed the best soldiers of the set, excepting the flank companies and after blackie the battalion again gradually whitened away, until it ended in a very fine light company of buccras, smart young fellows as need be all the officers were white, and all the soldiers, whatever their caste or colour, free of course.
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