ing over my wretched condition. I was
sometimes prompted to take my life, and that of Covey, but was prevented
by a combination of hope and fear. My sufferings on this plantation seem
now like a dream rather than a stern reality.

Our house stood within a few rods of the Chesapeake bay, whose broad
bosom was ever white with sails from every quarter of the habitable
globe. Those beautiful vessels, robed in purest white, so delightful to
the eye of freemen, were to me so many shrouded ghosts, to terrify and
torment me with thoughts of my wretched condition. I have often, in the
deep stillness of a summer's Sabbath, stood all alone upon the banks
of that noble bay, and traced, with saddened heart and tearful eye, the
countless number of sails moving off to the mighty ocean. The sight of
these always affected me powerfully. My thoughts would compel utterance;
and there, with no audience but the Almighty, I would pour out my soul's
complaint in my rude way, with an apostrophe to the moving multitude of
ships:

"You are loosed from your moorings, and free; I am fast in my chains,
and am a slave! You move merrily before the gentle gale, and I sadly
before the bloody whip! You are freedom's swift-winged angels, that fly
around the world; I am confined in bands of iron! O, that I were free!
O, that I were on one of your gallant decks, and under your protecting
wing! Alas! betwixt me{171} and you the turbid waters roll. Go on, go
on. O that I could also go! Could I but swim! If I could fly! O, why was
I born a man, of whom to make a brute! The glad ship is gone; she hides
in the dim distance. I am left in the hottest hell of unending slavery.
O God, save me! God, deliver me! Let me be free! Is there any God? Why
am I a slave? I will run away. I will not stand it. Get caught, or get
clear, I'll try it. I had as well die with ague as with fever. I have
only one life to lose. I had as well be killed running as die standing.
Only think of it; one hundred miles straight north, and I am free! Try
it? Yes! God helping me, I will. It cannot be that I shall live and die
a slave. I will take to the water. This very bay shall yet bear me into
freedom. The steamboats steered in a north-east coast from North Point.
I will do the same; and when I get to the head of the bay, I will turn
my canoe adrift, and walk straight through Delaware into Pennsylvania.
When I get there, I shall not be required to have a pass; I will travel
without being di