[CHAPTER XIV.]
The country I now lived in was new, and abounded with every sort of game common to a new settlement. Wages were high, and I could sometimes earn a dollar and a half a day by doing job work on Sunday. The price of a day's work here was a dollar. My master paid me regularly and fairly for all the work I did for him on Sunday, and I never went anywhere else to procure work. All his other hands were treated in the same way. He also gave me an old gun that had seen much hard service, for the stock was quite shattered to pieces, and the lock would not strike fire. I took my gun to a blacksmith in the neighborhood, and he repaired the lock, so that my musket was as sure fire as any piece need be. I found upon trial that though the stock and lock had been worn out, the barrel was none the worse for the service it had undergone.
I now, for the first time in my life, became a hunter, in the proper sense of the word; and generally managed my affairs in such a way as to get the half of Saturday to myself. This I did by prevailing on my master to set my task for the week on Monday morning.
Saturday was appropriated to hunting, if I was not obliged to work all day, and I soon became pretty expert in the use of my gun. I made salt licks in the woods, to which the deer came at night, and I shot them from a seat of clapboards that was placed on the branches of a tree. Raccoons abounded here, and were of a large size, and fat at all seasons. In the month of April I saw the ground thickly strewed with nuts, the growth of the last year. I now began to live well, notwithstanding the persecution that my mistress still directed against me, and to feel myself, in some measure, an independent man.
The temper of my mistress grew worse daily, and to add to my troubles, the health of my master began to decline, and towards the latter part of autumn he told me that already he felt the symptoms of approaching death.
This was a source of much anxiety and trouble to me, for I saw clearly, if I ever fell under the unbridled dominion of my mistress, I should regret the worst period of my servitude in South Carolina. I was afraid as winter came on that my master might grow worse and pass away in the spring—for his disease was the consumption of the lungs.
We passed this winter in clearing land, after we had secured the crops of cotton and corn, and nothing happened on our plantation to disturb the usual monotony of the life of a slave, except that in the month of January, my master informed me that he intended to go to Savannah for the purpose of purchasing groceries, and such other supplies as might be required on the plantation, in the following season; and that he intended to take down a load of cotton with our wagon and team, and that I must prepare to be the driver. This intelligence was not disagreeable to me, as the trip to Savannah would, in the first place, release me for a short time from the tyranny of my mistress, and in the second, would give me an opportunity of seeing a great deal of strange country. I derived a third advantage, in after times, from this journey, but which did not enter into my estimate of this affair, at that time.