The old Guinea man was
winnowing wheat one day, with an old-fashioned fan (did any of you
ever see one of these primitive machines for separating wheat from the
chaff, used by our fathers before the fanning mill was invented? It
was an ingenious contrivance, by which a man with a strong back and
of a strong constitution, could clean some twenty bushels in a single
day). While stooping over to fill his fan with unwinnowed grain, the
buck, taking advantage of his position, came like a catapult against
him, and sent him like a ball from a Paixhan gun, head foremost into
the chaff. Great was the astonishment, but greater the wrath of
Pompey, and dire the vengeance that he denounced against his
assailant. Gathering himself up, and rubbing the part battered by the
attack of his enemy, he retreated around the corner of the barn, and
procuring a rock weighing some twenty pounds, returned to the presence
of his foe, who was quietly eating the wheat that the negro had been
cleaning, evidently regarding it as the legitimate spoils of victory.
Getting down on all fours, and managing to hold the stone against his
head, Pompey challenged his enemy to combat. The buck, nothing loth,
drew back to a proper distance, and shutting both eyes, came like a
battering _ram_ against the stone on the other side of which was the
negro's head.
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