Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/179

 I felt was dreadful. Till that moment, I had concealed from myself, the misery of my situation. I had been familiar with calamity, but this exceeded any thing I had ever suffered. It is true, I had once before been separated from my wife; but my bodily pains, my delirium and fever had helped to blunt the agony of that separation. Now, I was torn from both wife and child! — and that too, without any thing to call off my attention, or to deaden the torture of conscious agony. My heart swelled with impotent passion, and beat as though it would leap from my bosom. My forehead glowed with a burning heat. I would have wept; but even that relief was denied me. The tears refused to flow; the fever in my brain had parched them up.

My first impulse was, to attempt making my escape. But my new masters were too well acquainted with the business of legal kidnapping, to give me an opportunity. We were all collected in one of the out-houses, and carefully secured. With many of the plantation hands, this, Was quite an unnecessary precaution. A large proportion of them were so sick and weary of the tyranny of Mr Carleton's overseer, that they were glad of any change; and when their master made them a farewell visit, and began to condole with them upon their misfortune, several of them were bold enough to tell him that they thought it no misfortune at all; for whatever might happen, they could not be worse treated than they had been by his overseer. Mr Carleton seemed not well pleased at this bold disclosure, and took his leave of us rather abruptly; and certainly this piece of information could not have been very soothing to his feelings.

At early dawn we were put into travelling order. A wagon carried the: provisions and the younger children. The rest, of us were chained together, and proceeded in the usual fashion.

It was a long journey, and we were two or three weeks upon the road. Considering that we were slaves driven to market, we were treated on the whole, with unexpected humanity, At the end of the third or fourth day's journey, the women and children were released from their chains;