Slave Life in Georgia - African American History

Slave Life in Georgia 74
out: a thing that is often done. In this way I avoided many embarrassing
questions, and got the opportunity of acquiring some very useful scraps of
information; to do which, indeed, was one of my principal objects in coming
down to the quay.
After striking my bargain, and sauntering about awhile, I started off till I came
to the woods, a mile and a half from the town, where I remained the rest of the
day. As soon as it got dark, I took the same road back, intending to return into
the town; but I became alarmed, and coming to a steam-mill between two
ferries, I crept along on my hands and knees to a place where I had noticed, in
the morning, a little boat fastened to a tree, and which it was now my object to
get. It lay between the two ferries, and nearly opposite to the upper point of an
island that lies between St. Louis and the Illinois bank. I reached the boat,
jumped into it, snapped the chain by a rude jerk, and put off. The current was
rapid and very strong, and the river of considerable width, and full of snags. My
object was to make the upper point of the island, for if I failed, and struck it at
any other part, I knew that the current would draw me down to the steam-boat
wharf
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again, where I should be discovered by the watch. It was with the utmost
difficulty I avoided the snags, but at length I touched the island, at the spot I
have mentioned. On reaching the bank I encountered another difficulty. The
current had undermined the turf, and made it so rotten, that I could not land, not
being able to make the boat fast. I was so exhausted, too, by the efforts I had
made to reach the Illinois side, that before I recovered myself, I drifted quite
three quarters of a mile down, to a place where the stump of a tree stuck up, at
the water's edge. Here I succeeded in securing the boat, and when the current
brought her gunwale on, close enough to the bank, I leaped ashore.
By this time it was daylight, and therefore dangerous for me to be seen; but I
had no alternative save to walk on till I should reach a convenient place of
concealment. I had not proceeded very far, before I saw a white man, to whom I
made up.
"If you please, Sir," said I, "do you know of a coloured man living away about
here?"
"What name?" asked he.
24.03.2006