He had been two years in the swamps, and considered it
his future home. He had met a negro woman, who was also a runaway,
and, after the fashion of his native land, had gone through the
process of oiling her, as the marriage ceremony. They had built a
cave on a rising mound in the swamp, and this was their home. This
man's name was Picquilo. His only weapon was a sword made from a
scythe which he had stolen from a neighboring plantation. His
dress, his character, his manners, and his mode of fighting were
all in keeping with the early training he had received in the land
of his birth. He moved about with the activity of a cat, and
neither the thickness of the trees nor the depth of the water
could stop him. His was a bold, turbulent spirit; and, from
motives of revenge, he imbrued his hands in the blood of all the
whites he could meet. Hunger, thirst, and loss of sleep, he seemed
made to endure, as if by peculiarity of constitution. His air was
fierce, his step oblique, his look sanguinary.
Such was the character of one of the negroes in the Southampton
Insurrection. All negroes were arrested who were found beyond
their master's threshold, and all white strangers were looked upon
with suspicion.
Such was the position in which Isabella found affairs when she
returned to Virginia in search of her child. Had not the
slave-owners been watchful of strangers, owing to the outbreak,
the fugitive could not have escaped the vigilance of the police;
for advertisements announcing her escape, and offering a large
reward for her arrest, had been received in the city previous to
her arrival, and officers were therefore on the lookout for her.
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