The ancient Greek of apostolic days was not alone in his eagerness “to see and to hear some new thing.” When the word went abroad in the negro settlements of Tickfall that there was to be a new thing at the lodge that night, cost of admission being one dollar, three hundred and twenty-five negroes, by methods distinctly Ethiopian, secured the necessary dollar, which for that night only was the password to the lodge. When Red Cutt appeared upon the scene, he by himself was worth the price of admission. He had dressed himself in a faint imitation of the costume of an aviator. That costume was a mixture of all the varied uniforms that he had seen, and portions of which he could acquire.
Beginning at the feet, for some reason known only to himself, he wore a pair of spurs; around his legs were leather puttees—to that extent he resembled a cavalry officer. His pantaloons were hunting-breeches. His coat was a hunting-coat, somewhat appropriate because it was rain-proof, and might shed oil easily. His head-covering was a cap with a rubber visor, and his eyes were covered with enormous automobile goggles. He wore gauntlets on his hands, and somewhere he had acquired four brass buttons, from each of which was suspended a gaudy ribbon. He had evidently acquired these decorative ribbons at some association of drummers or the convention of some political party. One ribbon bore the words “Reception Committee.” A second ribbon was inscribed “Delegate,” and a third ribbon bore the magic word “Information.”
He was escorted to a seat on the rostrum by the president of the lodge, and looking through his automobile goggles at the crowd of negroes assembled, he was surprised, and felt some uneasiness.
He had expected not more than one hundred negroes. That would have been a crowd that he could manage; but when he found exactly three times that number, the assemblage looked to him too much like a mob—or at least it looked like it might be easily converted into one.
Hitch Diamond rose to his feet.
“Brudders, dar is a cullud pusson here to-night who is come on a important job. He is de only nigger in dis country whut ever went up in a airship. He has had plenty expe’unce as a flyin’ man, an’ he has come to learn us all how to fly up!”
“Whar we gwine fly to?” a voice spoke up.
“Wharever you wants to go,” Hitch Diamond answered.
At this point Pap Curtain rose to his feet. “Is dis here nigger a member of our lodge, Mr. Pres’dunt?” he snarled.
“Naw, suh.”
“Is dis here some new degree we takes in dis lodge?” Pap persisted.
“Naw, suh.”
“Well, whut is dis about?”
“Ef you’ll set down, Pap,” Hitch growled, “an’ let our visitin’ brudder tell his bizzness in his own way, mebbe you’ll git some information.”
“I’s one of de bo’d of directors of dis here lodge,” Pap snarled. “Ef dar is any bizzness dat I ain’t seen about befo’hand, I’m ag’in’ it.”
The lodge members showed impatience at this interruption. Pap had been a conscientious objector to nearly everything the lodge had ever undertaken. He was quick to notice their impatience, and sat down grumbling to himself.
Red Cutt arose and fingered the three badges on his breast. Touching one particular badge by the corner, and holding it out so that the lodge could see, he announced:
“Dis badge is marked ‘Information,’ an’ means dat I’m de man who answers questions an’ kin tell Pap Curtain whut he wants to know. Most of you knows my visit to dis town is to organize a school of flyin’ niggers. Some of you knows how to run automobiles, an’ so you kin ride over de country. I wants to learn you how to fly through de sky jes’ as easy as you walk on de ground. Atter you have got de lesson in yo’ mind, I will he’p you to buy a cheap airship from de gover’ment, an’ den you will be fixed jes’ like Gawd intended fer a nigger to be.”
Pap Curtain sprang to his feet, waved his hat in the air, and exclaimed in a loud voice:
“I’ve heard tell of dese flyin’ fellers, but I ain’t never seen one fly. Ef dis visitin’ brudder has come to give an exhibition I favors it!”
“Dat’s whut he has come to do,” Hitch assured him.
“Whar is yo’ flyin’-machine at?” Pap howled.
“Out in de Little Moccasin prairie,” Red told him.
“Less go out an’ take a look at it!” Pap exclaimed.
“I favor it,” three hundred negroes shouted in a chorus.
“I nominates myself to lead de peerade!” Vinegar Atts vociferated.
The movement was so unanimous that Red Cutt was frightened. He had no desire to go out to that airplane in the dark. He remembered a negro who had come to a little town where he had lived once and had pretended to be able to walk on the water. He posed as a divine healer, and a frequently made statement was: “I kin walk on de water, but I don’t want to.” Thereupon some skeptical negroes had carried him down to the banks of the Mississippi and tossed him headlong into the yellow stream, insisting that he give them a demonstration of his ability to do what he said he could do. They had fished this divine healer out of the river with a hook and rolled him on a barrel for an hour before he showed the least sign of returning consciousness. Red Cutt was appalled by the thought of what might happen to him if that mob of negroes insisted upon his giving a trial flight.
“Come on, niggers!” Vinegar Atts bellowed. “Less go out an’ see de flyin’-machine!”
Three hundred negroes moved their feet as one man. Hitch Diamond laid his hand upon the arm of Red Cutt about as a policeman would put a man under arrest. Vinegar stepped forward and got on the other side of the aviator, and they conducted him down the rickety stairs of the lodge room and led the procession that formed in a straggling line in the middle of the sandy street.
It was a night in which the moon shone in all its glory—such a moon as glows over the Louisiana swamps when the humidity of the atmosphere seems to focus the rays in startling brightness on every object. The negro is like a cat, sleepy and dull during the day; but he wakes up at night, and is a prowler in the streets and woods and fields. It was four miles to the Little Moccasin prairie, but that tramping crowd of men thought nothing of that, and as they marched they sang, keeping step to music that carried echoes of the African jungle, and those minor tones which are characteristic of all people who have been enslaved since the ancient days when subjugated Israel in the land of Egypt “hung their harps on the willows.”
“Look here, niggers,” Red said to Vinegar and Hitch. “Dis is not de proper night to take a ride in a airplane. De moon is shining too dang bright. Ef I git up fawty thousand fo............