Page:Fifty Years in Chains, or the Life of an American Slave.djvu/353

Rh At the sight of him, I sprang to my feet, and running to the other end of the fallen tree on which I sat, and being there out of danger, had an opportunity of viewing the motions of the alligator at leisure. Finding me out of his reach, he raised his trunk from the ground, elevated his snout, and gave a wistful look, the import of which I well understood; then turning slowly round, he retreated to the water, and sank from my vision.

I was much alarmed by this adventure with the alligator, for had I fallen in with this huge reptile in the night time, I should have had no chance of escape from his tusks.

The whole day was spent in the swamp, not in traveling from place to place, but in waiting for the sun to shine, to enable me to obtain a knowledge of the various points of the heavens. The day was succeeded by a night of unbroken darkness; and it was late in the evening of the second day before I saw the sun. It being then too late to attempt to extricate myself from the swamp for that day, I was obliged to pass another night in the lodge that I had formed for myself in the thick boughs of a fallen cypress tree, which elevated me several feet from the ground, where I believed the alligator could not reach me if he should come in pursuit of me.

On the morning of the third day the sun rose