whip her tell yer tells me ter stop."

"He didn't go ter do it, Mos' Buck," pleaded Little Lizay, frightened for
Alston. "He'll whip me ef yer'll give 'im the whip.--I's ready, Als'on."

She crossed her arms over her bare bosom and shook her long hair forward:
then dropped her face low and stood with her back partly turned to Alston,
who now had the whip.

"Fire away!" said the overseer.

Alston was not a refined gentleman, whose youth had been hedged from the
coarse and degrading, whose good instincts had been cherished, whose
faculties had been harmoniously trained. He was not a hero: he was not
prepared to espouse to the death Little Lizay's cause--to risk everything
for the shrinking, helpless woman and for his own manhood--to die rather
than strike her. He was only a slave, used from his cradle to the low and
cruel and brutalizing. But he had the making of a man in him: his nature
was one that could never become utterly base. But there was no help, no
hope, for either of them in anything he could do. He might knock Mr. Buck
senseless, sure of the sympathy of every slave on the plantation. There
would be a brief triumph, but he and Little Lizay would have to pay for it:
bloodhounds, scourgings, chains, cruelty that never slept and could never
be placated, were sure as fate. Resistance was inevitable disaster.

Alston did not need to stand there undetermined while he went over this: it
was familiar ground. Over and over again he had settled it: it was madness
for the slave to oppose himself to the dominant white man.

So, after his first unreasoning recoil, his mind was decided to adminster