A Plantation Boyhood
As a plantation boy on the old rice estate of Hampton, near Charleston, in the decades following Reconstruction, I had a series of adventures so typical of the region and of the time that they may be said to represent, in a modest but authentic fashion, one aspect of that colorful period about which little has been written, and which has now completely vanished from the American scene.
Emerson says in his Journal that the young Southerners at Harvard in his day ’talk so much about horses and dogs that they are horses and dogs.’ The judgment is unneighborly, but it contains its grain of truth. Like many another plantation lad, I may be said to have been born in the saddle, with a gun in my hands and a pack of hounds yowling about my mount. At six years of age, I was helping to supply the table with game.
Our manner of living was a strange composite of crudeness and culture. Behind us stretched the background of a splendid past, but we had to win our daily bread like frontier people. It was not that we were in a new land, for Hampton had been ours since 1730, but that I was born into a world which had been ruined. Though the Civil War had been fought out on distant fields, its effect had been to destroy our social and agricultural system. Over my childhood slanted the long rays of the end of plantation life.
We saw nothing of the haughty languor and lassitude supposed to be characteristic of Southern manners. The demands of existence were too clamorous for our vigor. Times were too hard. My brothers and I were always cutting wood, hauling water, going ten miles for the mail, rounding up the stock, mending fences, building banks against the inundations which the river frequently threatened. Out of that active and joyous boyhood certain memories of more than usual vividness recur to me.
I
It was the Negro woodsman, Scipio, who first told Prince and me of the great Jackfield bull — Scipio, who had hunted and fished and trapped throughout the whole of that wild region known as the Santee Delta. He often came up to the plantation house to make some little purchase from the commissary, to beg shotgun shells from my father, or to borrow a rifle. Prince, my small Negro playmate, and I always looked forward to his coming, for Scipio had at his tongue’s end an inexhaustible supply of exciting stories to tell us, and sometimes he would give us deer antlers, alligator teeth, or the hides of squirrels, opossums, and raccoons. We were then about nine years old.
‘What’s the biggest alligator you ever saw?’ I asked the dusky hunter one day when, seated on an old block under the live oaks in the yard, he was regaling us with one of his stories.
‘De Jackfield bull,’ was Scipio’s ready answer. ‘He’s de boss of de swamp — too big to ketch.
‘How come he too big to ketch?’ Prince asked, his eyes so wide that they seemed to be all whites.
Scipio smoothed a space on the ground with his bare foot and drew a rude map with a stick. ‘Dis-here’s de river,’ he explained. ‘Dere’s de old bank of de island dat leads back from Norman Field to Jackfield. Right here is de head of de big canal. It used to run out into North River, but now it’s all blocked up and very deep. I cut me a long pole one day and tried to touch bottom. Ain’t no bottom dere to touch.’
‘But what about this bull?' I asked.
‘Just what I’m a-tellin’ you,’ the old Negro replied. ‘He live back in dat hole. It’s a wild place. One time a big cottonmouf moccasin done bite me in dat very spot, so I don’t visit dere no mo’. But I see de bull las’ summer, an’ a week ago yestiddy I done hear him bellow. He been callin’ me, but I ain’t gwine.’
Scipio laughed, and Prince remarked emphatically, ‘Dat’s a good place for we-uns not to hang aroun’, seein’ how it belongs to somebody else.’
‘Dat bull,’ said Scipio, looking straight at the little Negro, ‘he got a mouf you would just fit, Prince. He could swallow you befo’ you could wink more’n about once. You is just de right size for him.’
Prince did not enjoy the comparison. ‘Ain’t no halligator gwine eat me,’ he muttered.
‘Scipio,’ I said, seized with a sudden idea, ‘the chances are that Prince is going to eat that bull. I don’t see why we should n’t catch him.’
The old Negro jumped to his feet, looking apprehensively toward the house, whence he expected my father to appear. He laid a warning hand on my arm. ‘Look here, young boss — don’t you go to Jackfield. If dat ain’t no place for me, it cain’t be no place for you.’
At that moment my father came out, and he and Scipio engaged in conversation. Prince and I repaired to the sunny side of a big rice stack, where we talked over the exciting possibility of going after the bull. Prince was n’t very enthusiastic. ‘How long you ’spec’ he is?’ he asked, his imagination conjuring up a dragon of perilous proportions.
‘Oh, not too long,’ I answered lightly, as if I knew all about him.
‘But if we goes back into dat Jackfield, either de bull ketches us or we ketches him. What make you think we ain’t gwine be de ones which gits kotched ? ’
‘I’ll talk it over with Father,’ I said. ‘He knows more than Scipio. If he says we may, you’ll go, won’t you, Prince?’
He laughed. ‘I ain’t quite ready to cross Jordan, but I will cross dis river. I kin run, and ain’t no halligator kin beat me if I gits de right start.’
When I approached my father on the subject, he seemed very dubious at first. ‘It is far away,’ he said, ‘and very wild. I have n’t been there myself for years, but I have no doubt that this alligator is as big as Scipio declares him to be. Still, you boys will have to make men of yourselves somehow. You may go, but go carefully. Take no chances. And see if you cannot really catch this old dragon. He’s a terror to all the stock on the island. One marauder like that can destroy a year’s profit on the plantation. Get him if you possibly can, but take no foolish chances.’
When I conveyed to Prince the information that we were really going, he did not respond as I had hoped he would; but he consented to accompany me, and after making a few preparations we were ready to start.
II
Our equipment was simple. We had a long cotton plough line, and to one end of it we attached a dog chain. To the chain we fastened a big hook that Prince’s father had fashioned for us out of a steel spindle. We took a gun with us to secure alligator bait. After luncheon one day we set forth on our great expedition.
Crossing the river in a dugout cypress canoe, we moored our boat in one of the old rice-field canals that spanned the wild island. We had to walk some distance along the overgrown bank before we came to the remote and melancholy region known as Jackfield. Our progress was hindered by marshes and rank growths of cane, bushes, and vines that blocked our path. Once or twice we had to circle dense patches of swamp brier and swamp blackberry. The place was alive with snakes, and we had to walk very gingerly, for most of them were the deadly cottonmouth — burly, mud-stained, irritable. The moccasin is one of the most truculent of snakes; often he will make no move to retreat when a man approaches.
Toward the far end of the island, in a cool grove of oaks, we shot a gray squirrel for baiting the alligator line. Then we struck straight for the head of the canal, where Scipio had told us the mighty bull made his home. The canal was about twenty feet wide and was filled with yellow, brackish water. On its banks, densely grown over with marsh and duck oats and tall lotus stems, we saw ample evidence that Scipio had told us the truth. Here was a mud bank where the huge reptile had evidently been accustomed to sleep in the sun. We could see where he had lain. The mud over which he had dragged himself was smooth. Big bearlike tracks were deeply imprinted in the soil, once soft, but now baked hard.
At the size of these tracks Prince gazed with misgiving. ‘He done wear number ’leven shoe,’ he commented.
‘The one that Scipio caught in the river and brought to the house was thirteen feet long, but he did n’t have feet as big as this,’ I answered.
Prince glanced back longingly over the wild waste land through which we had come. ‘If he comes out to git us, we knows de way home. Dat’s somethin’.’
We advanced toward the head of the canal, and as we made progress up the edge of that lonely waterway signs of the monstrous creature became increasingly numerous. There were tracks everywhere. We saw where he had wallowed. Great beds of wampee were mashed flat by his scaly bulk. We marked how, at several places, he had crawled off through the marsh, leaving a wide swath in the island greenery. There could be no mistake about Scipio’s tale; we were at the haunt of one of the largest of those strange creatures which should have perished from the earth with the passing of the Age of Monsters.
Prince and I were both more than a little awed. In all that wild loneliness we felt very small. The rustling of the marsh disturbed us, and the weird hooting of owls in the mouldering swamp to the northward made us shiver. We pushed on, scanning the surface of the canal for a sight of the bull or for a suitable place to set our line. Some fifty yards ahead of us we noticed a cypress on the farther bank of the canal, and, reaching from the cypress almost to our side of the waterway, a huge black log lay half submerged.
‘That tree yonder will be a good place to set the line,’ I suggested to Prince, ‘and we can cross over on that old log — if it will hold us.’
Prince looked at the tree, glanced dubiously at the ugly yellow water of the canal, and then at the log. His eyes were always better than mine. ‘You think dat’s a log?’ he asked, shaking his head.
‘Yes — right yonder by the cypress.’
‘Dat a halligator!’ exclaimed Prince.
I looked in amazement and saw that it was indeed. ‘It’s our alligator!’ I shouted. ‘That’s the great Jackfield bull!’ There on the placid surface the huge reptile lay, evidently not yet aware of our approach.
An alligator is the most skillful submarine in existence. When he wishes, he can lie just under the surface of the water with nothing but his eyes out. Again, he will drowse while ‘riding high,’ with the greater part of his body showing. This great bull lay so that we could see his entire length. As we crept nearer we could also see the grim contour of his iron jaws, vast and terrible.
‘How long is he, Prince?’ I whispered.
‘Long enough,’ Prince muttered, and he looked back the way we had come, evidently turning over in his mind the thought that retreat, at that moment, would be the better part of valor.
‘Come on,’ I said. ‘He is n’t going to jump out of the water and get us.’
My words were meant to sound courageous, but, to tell the truth, I had no idea what such a giant dragon might do. As a matter of fact, what he did do was accomplished so suddenly and silently that it was eerie. He simply vanished. One would suppose that so large a creature would stir up a great commotion in getting under water. Not at all. Without a sound, with hardly a tiny ripple to mark his wake, the huge submarine had submerged.
For some moments Prince and I stood baffled, uncertain whether to advance or to retreat. After a discreet interval we cautiously approached the spot where the great beast had lain with his head toward the bank, and a very curious sight met our eyes. On the placid surface of the canal, outlined with perfect accuracy, the exact shape of the old bull was etched in tiny bubbles. It looked just as if a foamy and filmy alligator, monstrous in size, were floating before us.
‘How come dat?’ demanded Prince with genuine alarm. ‘Maybe he’s a speret.’
‘That’s nothing,’ I ventured to reassure him. ‘He sank, you see, and left his shape in bubbles.'
‘Hm! It take more’n a halligator to do dat. We could n’t do it.’ It was evident to Prince that the creature with which he had to deal was endowed with supernatural powers.
‘Let’s set the line,’ I suggested, feeling that, action would be the best antidote for fear.
This wo proceeded to do. First we tied the end of our plough line around the trunk of a willow tree. Then we affixed the bait to the big hook, which was joined to the cotton rope by means of the dog chain — a safety device to prevent the alligator’s biting the line in two. To complete our arrangements we made use of a trick Scipio had taught us. He had told us never to let the alligator bait touch the water, for garfish, bullheads, or small ’gators would soon make away with it. He explained that the proper procedure was to let the line hang over some rotten pole, limb, or stake, with the hook suspended a foot or two above the water, A big alligator will seize it in the air, swallow the bait whole, and break down the stake as he pulls on the line. We followed these instructions and suspended the squirrel over the canal by dropping the chain over a forked stick which was stuck lightly in the muddy bank.
‘Well, we can leave now,’ Prince suggested, a good deal of feeling in his tone.
‘Yes,’ I agreed, sharing his relief. ‘And to-morrow afternoon we can come back and lead our old bull home.’
‘Not we!’ Prince expostulated. ‘ You can lead ’im.’
Without wasting any time about it, we made our way back across the lonely island. Long lances of light from the setting sun streamed over the melancholy waste land, and the whole aspect of that wild country seemed fraught with mystery and danger. We were glad to recross the river and find ourselves at home again.
III
Immediately after luncheon the next day we sallied forth. Since we now knew the way to Jackfield, we made good time and were soon beside the canal again. Everything was still and peaceful, with nothing to suggest that there had been any occurrence to disturb that melancholy domain. As we moved along the bank, Prince halted me with a hand upon my arm. ‘De bait is gone,’ he whispered.
Instinctively we moved away from the water’s edge and made for the willow tree to which we had tied our line. We found it stretched as taut as wire, the far end of it disappearing in the yellow canal. Following the line and fingering it gingerly, we saw on all sides the signs of a prolonged and bitter struggle. Wampee beds were torn to pieces, reeds were leveled to the ground, and the muddy shores of the canal showed clearly where our giant captive had wrestled to free himself.
I had a gun and Prince carried a stout stick. With this he gave the taut line a heavy blow, and it brought an immediate answer. The great alligator surged to the top of the yellow water and lay there looking at us, savage surprise, grim malice, ancient craft showing in his monstrous features.
’Dat’s him,’ Prince announced. ‘You was gwine lead ’im home, you know. Don’t let me stop you.’
I took hold of the line and tugged it gently. To my surprise, the huge black beast offered no resistance. He let himself be pulled toward the shore without making a single move, and for every foot that he came Prince stepped back two. By the time the alligator’s head touched the bank, my dusky companion had climbed a stump twenty feet away.
‘We ought to take him home alive,’ I shouted.
Prince laughed uneasily. ‘We never done take one befo’.'
‘Perhaps we can lead him down the bank,’ I suggested. ‘Untie the line, and let’s see if he will follow us.’
The bull was evidently hooked in a manner to make him willing to obey the pull of the line. We drew him ashore, wondering at his enormous size and his apparently peaceful disposition. No sooner, however, had his clawed feet touched the bank than a desperate struggle ensued, in which Prince and I were badly worsted. We barely managed to take a turn about the willow tree with the line; but for this, our prize would surely have escaped. Even as it was, he succeeded in plunging downward into the murky depths of the canal, and his exertions set the waters rocking violently.
‘What now?’ I asked Prince. Our acquaintance with angry bull alligators was so slight that we had no notion how to handle this one.
‘Shoot ’im,’ said Prince.
‘Let’s try leading him once more.’
So we did, and for some reason the big saurian made no further effort to resist the tug of the line. In his struggle he must have swallowed the hook more deeply. At any rate, when he reached the bank he came walking out, with that peculiar gait which one sees in a frightened terrapin on land. He stood high on his short, massive legs, and we were amazed at his size. He was by far the largest alligator I had ever seen up to that time, and I have rarely encountered one to equal him since.
‘Which one of us is to lead him?’ I asked.
Prince began to laugh softly. ‘You lead ’im. I done tol’ you it’s bad luck to take home such as dat. But effen you wants ’im, go on — lead ’im. Ain’t nobody holdin’ you. When it’s all over, I’ll tell de folks back home how it happen.’
‘All right, I’ll lead him. You carry the gun and come behind. If he charges me, shoot him — but don’t make a mistake in your aim.’
The dramatic moment came shortly after we had got the bull in the brierhung pathway that ran on top of the rice-field bank. The sun was sinking. Long shadows were stealing over the waste-land fields. Mists were rising from the swamp. Gingerly I walked backward down the path with my huge captive in tow.
‘If de rope go slack in yo’ han’,’ Prince called to me, ‘you better run. I cain’t hardly see to shoot ’im in dese bushes.’
At a bad place in the bank the rope did go slack, and the bull made an awkward rush forward. Prince heard his commotion, yelled to me, and I jumped aside, still clinging to the rope. Our bull then became sullen and stubborn, and it was nearly dark before we could get him started again.
When we came to a big break across which we should have to wade over our knees, we considered tying up our captive for the night, but we were afraid he might escape or die with that hook in him. It seemed better and more merciful to end his life then and there. So we shot him, with nothing but starlight to give us aim.
I have often felt pity when I have had to take the life of other things, but never when I have killed an alligator, for he is essentially a highwayman. Wherever such a monster takes up his abode, all other creatures in the neighborhood are subjected to a veritable reign of terror. When Prince and I made away with the great Jackfield bull, we established law and order once more in all that desolate region where he had for so long carried on his depredations.
IV
We had on the plantation many harmless wild creatures such as deer and turkeys, but the semitropical wilderness that surrounded us was infested with dangerous ones as well. There were alligators, such as the one I have described, and serpents, many of them venomous. Copperheads, coral snakes, cottonmouth moccasins, timber rattlers, pygmy rattlers, and lordly diamond-back rattlers were often encountered, especially in the blossomy thickets along the watercourses and beside the humid lagoons.
About half a mile from the old plantation gateway, on the left of the road as one goes out, lies Witch Pond, one of those spectral bodies of water so often met with in the pine-wood districts of South Carolina — lonely, forbidding, its black waters closely fringed with straight tupelos and weeping cypresses. Immediately opposite, on the right of the road, is Spencer’s Pond. Originally these two had been one, but a causeway had been built of heaped-up sand, and the road which led to the plantation formed a narrow isthmus between the two pools. In time, trees and shrubs had taken root at the sides of the road, and through the screen of these the passer-by could catch glimpses of the dark waters on either side. Beyond the causeway was a stretch of virgin forest which we called Pasture Woods. Here great pine trees towered toward the sun, their clean, straight shafts almost the color of polished cedar, while overhead every bough was draped with silvergray festoons of Spanish moss.
Coming home from a ride, our horses would never quicken their pace, as horses do when they know they are nearly home, until they came to Witch Pond, when they invariably broke from a walk into a trot, and from a trot into a gallop. In my boyish mind I always associated these actions with the sinister aspect of those dark waters, believing that the horses’ instinct made them aware of some lurking danger. And not without reason did I think so. Twice I had killed big alligators in Witch Pond, and once when our hounds took a deer across Spencer’s Pond they returned to us cowed and silent, and we never saw the deer again. We supposed that an alligator had caught the deer, and that the hounds had witnessed that tragedy of the wild.
One March morning, when the warmth of the early springtime was flushing into bridal bloom the ancient live oaks and the patriarchal cypresses, I was riding back through Pasture Woods with the mail, and had come abreast of Witch Pond when my attention was casually attracted by what I took to be a log lying across the causeway. There had been no storm, but I easily accounted for it by supposing that the shaft of a dead pine had fallen across the road. I was riding a young horse whose one purpose in life seemed to be to keep a sharp lookout for strange objects to shy at, so as we approached the obstruction I tightened my grip upon the reins. As the horse put one forefoot over it, the dead tree suddenly moved, and I saw that what I had mistaken for a tree was a great serpent. The horse gave a tremendous bound, which almost unseated me, and raced away like the wind, snorting and tossing his head. After going fifty yards or more I got control of him and turned him about so that I could look back. The snake had also turned, and was lying with his full length stretched down the middle of the road, his head toward me.
In my life on the plantation I had had an unusual variety of experiences with snakes and reptiles of many kinds; and with the aid of a quaint old book entitled Reptilian Life in the Carolinas I had identified a large number of the species. I knew well the rattlesnakes, the beautiful king snake, which we used to call ‘the thunderbolt,’ the deadly cottonmouth moccasin, the harlequin snake, the black racer, and many others; but the fellow now confronting me was larger than any snake I had ever dreamed could be found in those woods. I turned my horse this way and that to make sure my eyes were not deceiving me.
My father had always taught me to face a difficulty directly, as soon as it arose; so I made up my mind then and there that the big snake and I were going to have it out. The horse had common sense enough to refuse to advance one step toward the ugly reptile, so I dismounted and tethered him to a sapling, using a light halfhitch tie which would enable me to free him in a moment if it should be necessary to beat a hasty retreat. I took a short turn in the woods to search for a suitable weapon with which to make the attack, and selected a twentyfoot pine pole, which was just about all a boy of ten could manage.
When I returned to the road, the great serpent lay there waiting for me; apparently he had not moved. I approached to within fifteen feet with my pole poised to strike, and measured him carefully with my eye. I knew that, whatever might be the success of my venture, I should have a marvelously strange story to tell when I got home, and I wanted to be sure of my facts. The snake’s head was as broad as a man’s hand. In length, I took him to be ten feet, his body fully a foot in circumference. His coloring was an uncertain brown, with hints of brighter shades that the swamp mud through which he had crawled had soiled and partly concealed. I did not wholly identify him, however, until I saw his sheaf of rattles, held a little off the ground. As I stood looking at him, he whirred them softly; it was a song of death.
Not daring to advance any closer, I decided to strike the blow which I knew would create instant and wonderful developments. There was only one result for which I was wholly unprepared, and that, of course, was what happened. With all the force I could command, I heaved my weapon at the broad head of the snake. It went straight to the mark with all the power I could put into the fling and the added weight of the pole itself, but the blow rebounded as if it had fallen on a huge rubber ball. The snake, instead of writhing in pain, merely seemed to be a trifle annoyed, and lifted its head, along with three or four feet of its body, several inches from the road.
The blow had been fair, and I had no reason to believe that I could deal another more effective than the first had been. Under the circumstances, it was not hard for me to persuade myself that I ought not to be late in getting home with the mail. I turned and fled down the road toward my horse. When, from the safety of his back, I took a parting look behind me, the great snake lay just as I had left it, in an attitude of indolent menace.
One of the real regrets of my life is that I rode away that morning, leaving my dangerous antagonist in possession of the field. Not long afterward, near the same spot, a Negro turpentine worker killed a great diamond-back rattler which answered in every particular the description of the one I had met. I have always believed that this was my Witch Pond serpent.
(Other incidents of ‘A Plantation Boyhood’ will be published next month)