While I was making my survey I continued to charge my gun, and endeavoured, to the best of my power, to calculate the number of the enemy. I could only make out twenty-four; and I do not think I was wrong by more than one or two on either side. In the meantime the boy stood beside me, apparently calm and tranquil, without saying a word. There was an heroic sort of quietude in his demeanour which struck me very much. I knew that through the whole of the south of the United States the idea of a revolt of the slaves is one of those fearful phantoms of the imagination which is present to the minds of all men, although, in the affairs of business, or the excitement of pleasure, they may, from custom, forget it, and take no notice of the shadow of Nemesis which is cast upon the festal board--the sword suspended by a hair, which hangs over the head even of the lord of the feast. They are like people inhabiting a volcanic region, who trim their vines, and sing and dance in their harvests, forgetting altogether the proximity of danger and death, till the first tremulous motion of the earth announces the coming earthquake, and then they start up confused and alarmed by the coming of events which they might have foreseen in the due course of nature. That boy's coolness and tranquillity, in the circumstances in which we were placed, struck me very much. None of us at that time could tell how all these things were to end: no one was aware how far the conspiracy had extended, or what preparations had been made to insure its success. All that we knew was, that the blacks were infinitely superior in number to the whites; that they had risen with merciless fury against their masters; and that they had not yet met with any decisive check: that every house they had attacked they had taken without difficulty, and massacred the inhabitants without consideration of age or sex. Such was our position; yet that boy stood there beside me as cool and quiet as if there was no risk or danger in the coming contest. "Now, my good lad," I said, after I had taken my survey, "you and I are to defend this window, I suppose." "I suppose so, sir," he said; "my father told me to stay here." "Are you not a little nervous?" I asked, with a smile. "Yes, sir," he answered frankly; "but I always do what father tells me." "Well," I answered, "there is no great danger, and you are a good, brave fellow. I have seen a good many of these affairs; and it is such hearts as yours that always carry victory with them. Now, I am an old soldier and an officer, so you must obey orders. Go and get a pillow from the bed, and place it on the window-sill. Now, kneel down there; rest your gun quietly over; fix upon the man you intend to shoot, keeping him always under cover of the muzzle, and do not fire until I tell you. I'll bet you a dollar you'll bring him down." "Won't you have a pillow, too?" asked the boy.