The
whole affair was gone through in a serious and business-like manner,
unusual in the negro. How long I watched them I cannot say; but it
seemed to me as if they went on for hours without slackening the pace,
or moving one muscle of their countenances, until my eyes became heavy
with looking at them. At length, the figures appeared to grow dim, and
among them I thought I recognised faces of friends then many thousands
of miles from me, and forms that the earth had long before covered
over. A death-like chill came over me: by a sudden impulse, I rushed
forward, and awoke. With bewildered feelings, I rose on my elbow, and
gazed around. The moon had risen; her cold, clear light making every
object near me either startlingly distinct, or else a mass of dark
shade, while a deep and solemn silence reigned around. All had
vanished--the singer and the dancers--the flaming, sparkling, roaring
fires, and the noisy groups around them; and I might have imagined
that I had awaked to find myself in another world, had it not been for
the heap of black ashes beside me, and the dark outline of the
steam-boat in the distance.
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