' But his powder was damped--or his courage!
Now the journey is over. The twelve fugitives have become
thirteen, for a little infant has been born on the march, never
to know, thank God, the horrors the mother has left behind. The
child is named after his deliverer 'John Brown,' who conducts
them safely across the ferry and places them under the shelter of
the Union Jack on the Canadian shore. Then the old man
reverently pronounces his 'Nunc dimittis,' 'Lord, now lettest
thou Thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen Thy
salvation.' 'I could not brook the thought that any ill should
befall them, least of all that they should be taken back to
slavery. The arm of Jehovah has protected us.' Before many
months those rescued ones were weeping at the news that John
Brown was condemned to die, and were saying 'Would that we could
die instead.'
CHAPTER VII
HARPER'S FERRY
John Brown now prepared for his final effort, for the enterprise
he had espoused and the sacrifice he had sworn to make for it
were to be completed by his death. 'There is no way of
deliverance but by blood,' had become his settled conviction upon
this slavery question. And truly it seemed so. The Slave States
were waxing fiercer in their unholy enterprise.
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