TAKEN SOUTH, AWAY FROM WIFE AND CHILDREN.
START FOR NEW ORLEANS.--STUDY NAVIGATION ON THE
MISSISSIPPI.--THE CAPTAIN STRUCK BLIND.--FIND SOME OF MY
OLD COMPANIONS.--THE LOWER DEPTHS.
Things went on in this way about a year. From time to time Master Amos
joked me about the six hundred and fifty dollars, and said his brother
kept writing to know why I did not send something. It was "diamond cut
diamond" with the two brothers. Mr. Amos had no desire to play into
the hands of Mr. Isaac. He was glad enough to secure my services to
take care of his stock and his people.
One day my master suddenly informed me that his son Amos, a young
man about twenty-one years of age, was going down the river to New
Orleans, with a flat-boat loaded with produce, and that I was to go
with him. He was to start the next day, and I was to accompany him and
help him dispose of his cargo to the best advantage.
This intimation was enough. Though it was not distinctly stated, yet
I well knew what was intended, and my heart sunk within me at the
near prospect of this fatal blight to all my long-cherished hopes.
There was no alternative but death itself; and I thought that there
was hope as long as there was life, and I would not despair even yet.
The expectation of my fate, however, produced the degree of misery
nearest to that of despair; and it is in vain for me to attempt to
describe the wretchedness I experienced as I made ready to go on board
the flat-boat. I had little preparation to make, to be sure; and there
was but one thing that seemed to me important. I asked my wife to sew
up my manumission paper securely in a piece of cloth, and to sew that
again round my person. I thought that having possession of it might
be the means of saving me yet, and I would not neglect anything that
offered the smallest chance of escape from the frightful servitude
that threatened me.
The immediate cause of this movement on the part of Master Amos I
never fully understood. It grew out of a frequent exchange of letters,
which had been kept up between him and his brother in Maryland.
Whether as a compromise between their rival claims it was agreed to
sell me and divide the proceeds, or that Master Amos, in fear of my
running away, had resolved to turn me into riches without wings, for
his own profit, I never knew. The fact of his intention, however, was
clear enough; and God knows it was a fearful blow.
My wife and children accompanied me to the landing, where I bade
them an adieu which might be for life, and then stepped into the
boat, which I found manned by three white men, who had been hired for
the trip. Mr. Amos and myself were the only other persons on board.
The load consisted of beef-cattle, pigs, poultry, corn, whisky,
and other articles from the farm, and from some of the neighboring
estates, which were to be sold as we dropped down the river, wherever
they could be disposed of to the greatest advantage. It was a common
trading voyage to New Orleans, in which I was embarked, the interest
of which consisted not in the incidents that occurred, not in storms,
or shipwreck, or external disaster of any sort; but in the storm of
passions contending within me, and the imminent risk of the shipwreck
of my soul, which was impending over me nearly the whole period of the
voyage. One circumstance, only, I will mention, illustrating, as other
events in my life have often done, the counsel of the Saviour, "He
that will be chief among you, let him be your servant."
We were, of course, all bound to take our trick at the helm in turn,
sometimes under direction of the captain, and sometimes on our own
responsibility, as he could not be always awake. In the daytime there
was less difficulty than at night, when it required some one who
knew the river, to avoid sand-bars and snags, and the captain was the
only person on board who had this knowledge. But whether by day or
by night, as I was the only negro in the boat, I was made to stand
at least three tricks (white men are very fond of such tricks) to
any other person's one; so that, from being much with the captain,
and frequently thrown upon my own exertions, I learned the art of
steering and managing the boat far better than the rest. I watched the
manoeuvres necessary to shoot by a sawyer, to land on a bank, or
avoid a snag, or a steamboat, in the rapid current of the Mississippi,
till I could do it as well as the captain. After a while he was
attacked by a disease of the eyes; they became very much inflamed and
swollen. He was soon rendered totally blind, and unable to perform
his share of duty. This disorder is not an unfrequent consequence of
exposure to the light of the sun, doubled in intensity as it is by the
reflection from the river. I was the person who could best take his
place, and I was in fact master of the boat from that time till our
arrival at New Orleans.
After the captain became blind we were obliged to lie by at night,
as none of the rest of us had been down the river before; and it was
necessary to keep watch all night, to prevent depredations by the
negroes on shore, who used frequently to attack such boats as ours,
for the sake of the provisions on board.
On our way down the river we stopped at Vicksburg, and I got
permission to visit a plantation a few miles from the town, where some
of my old companions whom I had brought from Kentucky were living. It
was the saddest visit I ever made. Four years in an unhealthy climate
and under a hard master had done the ordinary work of twenty. Their
cheeks were literally caved in with starvation and disease, and their
bodies infested with vermin. No hell could equal the misery they
described as their daily portion. Toiling half naked in malarious
marshes, under a burning, maddening sun, and poisoned by swarms of
musquitoes and black gnats, they looked forward to death as their
only deliverance. Some of them fairly cried at seeing me there, and at
thought of the fate which they felt awaited me. Their worst fears of
being sold down South had been more than realized. I went away sick at
heart, and to this day the sight of that wretched group haunts me.