Twelve Years a Slave

hesitate to kill him, and knowing it, he will run from you again through fear of his life. Now, Tibeats, you must sell him, or hire him out, at least. Unless you do so, I shall take measures to get him out of your possession.”
    In this spirit Ford addressed him the remainder of the distance. I opened not my mouth. On reaching the plantation they entered the great house, while I repaired to Eliza’s cabin. The slaves were astonished to find me there, on returning from the field, supposing I was drowned. That night, again, they gathered about the cabin to listen to the story of my adventure. They took it for granted I would be whipped, and that it would be severe, the well-known penalty of running away being five hundred lashes.
    “Poor fellow,” said Eliza, taking me by the hand, “it would have been better for you if you had drowned. You have a cruel master, and he will kill you yet, I am afraid.”
    Lawson suggested that it might be, overseer Chapin would be appointed to inflict the punishment, in which case it would not be severe, whereupon Mary, Rachel, Bristol, and others hoped it would be Master Ford, and then it would be no whipping at all. They all pitied me and tried to console me, and were sad in view of the castigation that awaited me, except Kentucky John. There were no bounds to his laughter; he filled the cabin with cachinnations, holding his sides to prevent an explosion, and the cause of his noisy mirth was the idea of my outstripping the hounds. Somehow, he looked at the subject in a comical light. “I know’d dey would’nt cotch him, when he run cross de plantation. O, de lor’, did’nt Platt pick his feet right up, tho’, hey? When dem dogs got whar he was, he was’nt dar — haw, haw, haw! O, de lor’ a’ mity!” — and then Kentucky John relapsed into another of his boisterous fits.
    Early the next morning, Tibeats left the plantation. In the course of the forenoon, while sauntering about the gin-house, a tall, good-looking man came to me, and inquired if I was Tibeats’ boy, that youthful appellation being applied indiscriminately to slaves even though they may have passed the number of three score years and ten. I took off my hat, and answered that I was.
    “How would you like to work for me?” he inquired.
    “Oh, I would like to, very much,” said I, inspired with a sudden hope of getting away from Tibeats.
    “You worked under Myers at Peter Tanner’s, didn’t you?”
    I replied I had, adding some complimentary remarks that Myers had made concerning me.
    “Well, boy,” said he, “I have hired you of your master to work for me in the “Big Cane Brake,” thirty-eight miles from here, down on Red River.”
    This man was Mr. Eldret, who lived below Ford’s, on the same side of the bayou. I accompanied him to his plantation, and in the morning started with his slave Sam, and a wagon-load of provisions, drawn by four mules, for the Big Cane, Eldret and Myers having preceded us on horseback. This Sam was a native of Charleston, where he had a mother, brother and sisters. He “allowed” — a common word among both black and white — that Tibeats was a mean man, and hoped, as I most earnestly did also, that his master would buy me.
    We proceeded down the south shore of the bayou, crossing it at Carey’s plantation; from thence to Huff Power, passing which, we came upon the Bayou Rouge road, which runs towards Red River. After passing through Bayou Rouge Swamp, and just at sunset, turning from the highway, we struck off into the “Big Cane Brake.” We followed an unbeaten track, scarcely wide enough to admit the wagon The cane, such as are used for fishing-rods, were as thick as they could stand. A person could not be seen through them the distance of a rod. The paths of wild beasts run through them in various directions — the bear and the American tiger abounding in these brakes, and wherever there is a basin of stagnant water, it is full of alligators.
    We kept on our lonely course through the “Big Cane” several miles, when we entered a clearing, known as “Sutton’s Field.” Many years before, a man by the name of Sutton had penetrated the wilderness of cane to this solitary place. Tradition has it that he fled thither, a fugitive, not from service, but from justice. Here he lived alone — recluse and hermit of the swamp — with his own hands planting the seed and gathering in the harvest. One day a band of Indians stole upon his solitude, and after a