He threw back his head and clenched his hands. His soul groaned within
him. "Heavenly Father, was man ever before set to such a task?" Fight?
God! if he could but fight! If he could but let go the elemental
passions that were leaping and gathering and burning in the eyes of
yonder caged and desperate black men. But his hands were tied--manacled.
One desperate struggle, a whirl of blood, and the whole world would rise
to crush him and his people. The white operatore in yonder town had but
to flash the news, "Negroes killing whites," to bring all the country,
all the State, all the nation, to red vengeance. It mattered not what
the provocation, what the desperate cause.
The door suddenly opened behind him and he wheeled around.
"Zora!" he whispered.
"Bles," she answered softly, and they went silently in to their people.
All at once, from floor to roof, the whole school-house was lighted up,
save a dark window here and there. Then some one slipped out into the
darkness and soon watch-fire after watch-fire flickered and flamed in
the night, and then burned vividly, sending up sparks and black smoke.
Thus ringed with flaming silence, the school lay at the edge of the
great, black swamp and waited. Owls hooted in the forest. Afar the
shriek of the Montgomery train was heard across the night, mingling with
the wail of a wakeful babe; and then redoubled silence.
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