Page:Narrative of the life and adventures of Henry Bibb, an American slave.djvu/147

Rh lead to my detection, should I remain at that spot. So I left it and went off where I could see the house, and that place too.

Jack had not long been gone, before I heard a great noise; a man, crying out with a loud voice, "Catch him! Catch him !" and hissing' the dogs on, and they were close after Jack. The next thing I saw. was Jack running for life, and an old white man after him, with a gun. and his dogs. The fence being on sidling ground, and wet with the rain, when Jack run against it he knocked down several pannels of it and fell, tumbling over and over to the foot of the hill; but soon recovered and ran to where he had left me; but I was gone. The dogs were still after him.

There happened to be quite a thicket of small oak shrubs and bushes in the direction he ran. I think he might Jiave been heard running and straddling bushes a quarter of a mile ! The poor fellow hurt himself considerably in straddling over bushes in that way, in making his escape.

Finally the dogs relaxed their chase and poor Jack and myself again met in the thick forest. He said when he rapped on the cook-house door, the colored woman came to the door. He asked her if she would let him have a bite of bread if she had it, that he was a poor hungry absconding slave. But she made no reply to what he said but immediately sounded the alarm by calling loudly after her master, saying, "here is a runaway negro!" Jack said that he was going to knock her down but her