Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/244

 idle curiosity; a New York mob had set me free; a Boston mob might perhaps delight in the opportunity of restoring me to servitude. I found my way, as soon as the crooked and irregular streets would allow me, to the wharves. — Many of the ships were stripped and rotting in the docks; but after some search and inquiry, I found a vessel about to sail for Bordeaux. I offered myself as a sailor. the captain questioned me, and laughed heartily at my land-lubberly air, and rustic ignorance; but finally he agreed to take me at half wages. He advanced me a month's pay; and the second mate who was a fine young fellow, and who seemed to feel for my lonely and helpless ignorance, assisted me in buying such clothes as would be necessary for the voyage.

In a few days, our cargo was completed, and the ship was ready for sea. We dropped off from the wharf; threaded our course among the numerous islets and headlands of Boston harbor; passed the castle and the lighthouse; sent off our pilot; and with all sail set, and-a smacking breeze, we left the town behind.

As I stood upon the forecastle, and looked towards the land, which soon seemed but a little streak in the horizon, and was fast sinking from our sight, I seemed to feel a heavy weight drop off me. The chains were gone. I felt myself a freeman; and as I watched the fast receding shore, my bosom heaved with a proud scorn, — a mingled feeling of safety and disdain.

"Farewell, my country!" — such were the thoughts that rose upon my mind, and pressed to find an utterance from my lips; — "And such a country! A land boasting to be the chosen seat of liberty and equal rights, yet holding such a portion of her people in hopeless, helpless, miserable bondage!"

"Farewell, my country! Much is the gratitude and thanks I owe thee! Land of the tyrant and the slave Farewell!"

"And welcome, welcome, ye bounding billows and any surges of the ocean! Ye are the emblems and the children of liberty — I hail ye as my brothers! — for, at last, I too am free! — free! — free!"