It was a rustling noise among the brakes; and when little Tommy went forward to call the men, two balls came whistling over the quarter, and then a loud rustling noise indicated that persons were retreating.  The captain retired to the cabin and took Tommy with him, giving orders to the negro pilot to stand to the deck, get her anchor up, and let her drift up stream with the tide, determined that if they shot any person, it should be the negroes, for whose value they would be held answerable.  Thus she drifted up the stream, and the next morning was at the creek at Colonel Whaley’s plantation.

A number of ragged negroes came down to the bank in high glee at the arrival, and making sundry inquiries about corn and bacon.  One old patriarchal subject cried out to the pilot, “Ah, Cesar, I ’now’d ye wah cumin’.  Massa, an’ young Massa Aleck, bin promis’ bacon mor’ den week, gess he cum’ now.”

“Got sum corn, but ven ye gets bacon out o’ dis craf’ ye kotch wesel, dat a’n’t got no hair on ’im,” said Cesar.

The scene around was any thing but promising-disappointing to the captain’s exalted ideas of Colonel Whaley’s magnificent plantation.  The old farm-house was a barrack-like building, dilapidated, and showing no signs of having lately furnished a job for the painter, and standing in an arena surrounded by an enclosure of rough slats.  Close examination disclosed fragments of gardening in the arena, but they showed the unmistakable evidences of carelessness.  At a short distance from this was a cluster of dirty-looking negro-huts, raised a few feet from the ground on palmetto piles, and strung along from them to the brink of the river were numerous half-starved cattle and hogs, the latter rooting up the sod.

It was now nearly slack water, on a high flood, and the schooner lay just above the bend of the creek.  Presently a large, portly-looking man, dressed like as Yorkshire farmer, came, to the bank, and in a stentorious voice ordered the captain to haul into the creek at once!  The manner in which the order was given rather taxed the captain’s feelings, yet he immediately set his men to work heaving up the anchor and carrying out “a line” to warp her in.  But that slow motion with which negroes execute all orders, caused some delay, and no sooner had he, begun to heave on the line than the tide set strong ebb and carried him upon the lower point, where a strong eddy, made by the receding water from the creek, and the strong undertow in the river, baffled all his exertions.  There she stuck, and all the warps and tow-lines of a seventy-four, hove by the combined strength of the plantation, would not have started her.  When the tide left, she careened over toward the river, for there was no means at hand to shore her up.

One of the drivers went up and reported “Massa captain got ’im ship ashore,” and down came Colonel Whaley, with all the pomp of seven lord mayors in his countenance.  “What sort of a feller are you to command a ship?  I’d whip the worst nigger on the plantation, if he couldn’t do better than that.  Rig a raft out and let me come o’ board that vessel!” said he, accompanying his demands with a volley of vile imprecations that would have disgraced St. Giles’.