Page:Fifty Years in Chains, or the Life of an American Slave.djvu/332

330 woods with their noise; if it can be said that a man lies still who is trembling in every joint, nerve and muscle, like a dog lying upon a cake of ice; and when I arose and turned round, I found myself so completely bereft of understanding, that I could not tell South from North, nor East from West. I could not even distinguish the thicket of bushes, from which I had removed to come to this place, from the other bushes of the woods. I remained here all day, and at night it appeared to me that the sun set in the south-east After sundown, the moon appeared to my distempered judgment to stand due North from me, and all the stars were out of their places. Fortunately I had sense enough remaining to know that it would not be safe for me to attempt to travel, until my brain had been restored to its ordinary stability; which did not take place until the third morning after my fright. The three days that I passed in this place I reckon the most unhappy of my life; for surely it is the height of human misery to be oppressed with alienation of mind, and to be conscious of the affliction.

Distracted as I was, I had determined never to quit this wood, and voluntarily return to slavery; and the joy I felt on the third morning, when I saw the sun rise in his proper place in the heavens; the black log, the thicket of bushes, and all other things resume the positions in which I found them, may be imagined by