Spheeksphobia; or The Adventures of Abel Stingflyer [pp. 585-593]

SOUTHERN LITERARY MESSENGER.
VOL. III. RICHMOND, OCTOBER, 1837. No. X.
T. W. WHITE, Editor and Proprietor. $ 5 PER ANN'UM.
SPHEEKSPHOBIA:
OR, THE ADVENTURES OF ABEL STINGFLYER, A. M.
A TRAGIC TALE.
By the Author of "The South-West" and " Lafitte."
A hundred mouths, a hundred tongues,
And throat of brass inspired with iron lungs.
Dryden.
One sultry summer afternoon, in eighteen hundred
and thirty-five, I was riding, with my umbrella held
perpendicularly above my head, and at an easy amblefor the sun was fiery hot, and I had travelled farthrough the principal street of Port Gibson, one of the
pleasantest villages in the state of Mississippi. As I
was about to cross a long and venerable looking bridge
on the northern outskirts of the town, I was startled by
a loud and prolonged outcry behind me, as if its utterer
were in imminent peril and great bodily fear. I turned
my head, at the "me time reining up, and beheld a
strange figure swiftl approaching me, sending forth at
the same time the most lamentable cries, the last still
louder than the preceding. But his voice did not so
much surprise me, as the eccentricity of his locomotion
and the oddity of his appearance. He was a tall and
gaunt man, without hat or shoes, and a calico scholar's
gown streamed behind him in the wind, created by his
rapid motion. His advance was not direct, but zig-zag:
now he would dart with velocity to the right, and now
as swiftly to the left, anon plunging under the bushes
lining the road-side, and then diving down, and scrambling on all-fours in the middle of the road, kicking his
heels into the air, and tossing the dust about him in
clouds, so as to render him for the time invisible: he
would then rise again with a fearful yell, and bolt forward in a right line, as if charging at me, filling the air
with his cries all the while, and waving his arms wildly
above his head, which at intervals received blows from
his desperate fists, each one sufficient to fell an ox. I
gazed in admiration on this singular spectacle, it may
be, not without some misgivings of personal damage, to
qualify which, in some degree, I turned the head of my
horse, so as to interpose it between my person and the
threatened danger. Onward he came, enveloped in a
cloud of dust, at the best speed human legs could bestow; and disdaining to fly, I prepared to meet the
charge as firmly as the valiant Knight of La Mancha
would have done in the same circumstances. My steed,
however, showed the better part of valor, and, notwithstanding much coaxing and soothing, began to wax
skittish, and as the danger grew more imminent, he
suddenly made a demi-volte across the bridge, and
turned broadside to the enemy, which was close aboard
of us, thereby effectually blockading the highway.
Hardly had he effected this change in his position, before the madman or apparition, for I deemed it to be
one or the other, coming' in such a questionable shape,'
instead of leaping upon me like a hyera, as I anticipated, dove, and with a mortal yell passed clean under
my horse's belly, and, before he could diminish his momentum, disappeared over the parapetless bridge into
the river beneath. On hearing the plunge, I alighted
from my horse, who was not a little terrified at the unceremonious use the strange being had made of his body,
hastily descended the precipitous bank of the stream,
and as the diver rose to the surface, which he did after
a brief immersion, a few yards below the bridge, seizing him by the skirts of his long gown, I dragged him
on shore. Gathering himself up slowly, he at length,
after much spluttering and blowing, and catching of his
breath, stood upright on his legs; then grasping my
hand, by dint of a great deal of gulping and sobbing —
for the poor man could barely articulate for wavant of
wind-he essayed to express his thanks for my timely
aid, withouit which, he asseverated, he should assuredly
"have died in the flood of great waters which passed
over his soul; but that he had been saved from the great
deep, and also from the barbed arrow of the pursuer,
from which latter danger, by the help of the Lord and
my horse, and peradventure through his sudden ablution, he had marvellously been delivered."
The speaker was a tall, spare man, with thin flanks,
broad shoulders, and high-cheeked bones, having a
Scottish physiognomy, with an homely expression of
Yankee shrewdness and intelligence. His long, sharp
nose, flanked by hollow cheeks, his peaked chin, and
lantern jaws, made up a configuration, which has not
inaptly been denominated a "hatchet face." His mouth
was of formidable width, garnished with very firm,
white teeth, generously displayed by the flexibility of
his loose lips, which, whenever he spoke, retired as it
were from before them. His eyes were of a patle blue
color, round and prominent, hereby promising, to speak
phrenologically, the organ of language large, which
promise his lingual attainments, as subsequently ascertained by me, did not belie. A pair of red, shaggy
brows projected over them, like a well-wooded crag;
they were rather darker than his hair, which, if owned
by a lady, I should term auburn; but growing as it did
on a male pow, which for ruggedness of outline, might
have been hewn into its present shape with a broadaxe, I shall call it red, unqualifiedly. His age might
have been forty; and in his stockings as he now was,
he stood no less than six feet one inch in height —of
which goodly length of limb and body, a pair of white
drilling trowsers, woollen short hose, a cotton shirt,
with a broad ruffle, and his long calico gown aforesaid,
constituted the only outward teguments. From all
points, including the points of his chin and nose, and
every available corner of his strait and matted hair,
here, in continuous streams-there, in large drops, chasing one another in qdck succession, the water descended towards the earth from the person of this dripping Nereus, while the woful expression of his physnomy, which judging from the combination of features it exhibited, was naturally sufficiently lugubrious,
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