Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/315

 made mention of Wild Tom, 1 began to feel the deepest interest, —the recovery of his people was a matter almost of life and death, pecuniarily speaking, since, unless they were recovered, it would be necessary for him to abandon half or more of his crop, and that too with cotton at sixteen cents the pound, and promising to be higher; for hired free laborers were things unknown in that part of the country, nor could even slave labor be hired at that season of the year, when every body was straining for dear life against the weeds, and when the ordinary supply of almost every plantation was expected to be diminished by the absence of a certain number of incorrigible fellows, who make it a rule, just at that season, to absent themselves for a summer vacation in the woods, being willing to risk the severest punishment they might encounter when taken, for the sake, at that particular season of the year and the crop, of a few weeks of agreeable woodland retirement. And here, indeed, a strong resemblance might be traced between them and very many of their masters, who, as the hot weather and unhealthy season came on, were accustomed to abandon their plantations, and to figure away for a few weeks, as grand as runaway Cuffee himself, at Philadelphia, New York, or Saratoga, to the astonishment of admiring and curious Yankees, in the assumed character of millionaires and nabobs; though sure to pay for it by pinching at home all the rest of the year, and living in almost as much terror of duns, writs, and executions, as their unhappy slaves do of the lash. In this extremity, therefore, my new acquaintance had offered a large reward for the recovery of his people ; to which inducement was added the standing reward for Wild Tom; also other rewards which had been offered for other runaways from other plantations in the neighborhood, more numerous this year than usual on account of the short supply of corn, and the greater breadth of cotton, which the prevailing high price had caused to be planted. A grand hunt had accordingly been proclaimed, and at short