“After this loss, I was pretty serious. Wasn’t badly treated. My master, an educated gentleman, was absent in New Orleans most of the time. Overseer Braxton, after the big scare he got about his soul, grew to be humane, and left almost everything to me. But I felt sick of life, and wanted to die, though not before I had killed Ratcliff. One day I heard that Corinna, a quadroon girl, a slave on the plantation, had fallen into a strange state, during which she preached as no minister had ever preached before. I had known her as a very ordinary and rather stupid girl. Went to see her in one of her trances. Found that report had fallen short of the real case. Was astonished at what I saw and heard. Saw what no white man would believe, and so felt I was wiser on one point than all the white men. My interviews with Corinna soon made me forget about Ratcliff; and when she died, six weeks after my first visit, felt my mind full of things it would take me a lifetime to think out and settle.
“After Corinna’s death, I stayed some months on the plantation, though I had a chance to leave. Stayed because I had an easy time and because I found I could be of use to the slaves; and further, because I had resolved, if ever I got free, it should be by freeing myself. A white man, a Mr. Vance, whose life I had saved, wanted to buy and free me. I made him spend his money so it would show for more than just the freeing of one man. But Braxton, the overseer, who was letting me have pretty much my own way, at last died; and Hawks, his successor, was of opinion that the way to get work out of niggers was to treat them like dogs; and so, one pleasant moonlight night, I made tracks for Galveston. Here, by means of false papers, I managed to get passage to New Orleans, and there hid myself on board a Yankee schooner bound for New London, Connecticut. When she was ten days out, I made my appearance on deck, much to the surprise of the crew. Fifteen days afterwards we arrived in the harbor of New London.
“Old Skinner, the captain, had been playing possum with me all the voyage,—keeping dark, and pretending to be my friend, meaning all the while to have me arrested in port. No sooner had he dropped anchor than he sent on shore for the officers. But the mate tipped me the wink. ‘Darkey,’ said he, ‘do you see that little green fishing-boat yonder? Well, that belongs to old Payson, an all-fired abolitionist and friend of the nigger. Our Captain and crew are all under hatches, and now if you don’t want to be a lost nigger, jest you drop down quietly astern, swim off to Payson, and tell him who you are, and that the slave-catchers are after you. If old Payson don’t put you through after that, it will be because it isn’t old Payson.’
“I did as the mate told me. Reached the fishing-boat. Found old Payson, a gnarled, tough, withered old sea-dog, who comprehended at once what was in the wind, and cried, ‘Ha! ha!’ like the war-horse that snuffs the battle. Just as I got into the boat, Captain Skinner came up on the schooner’s deck, and saw what had taken place. The schooner’s small boat had been sent ashore for the officers whose business it was to carry out the Fugitive-Slave Law. What could Skinner do? Visions of honors and testimonials and rewards and dinners from Texan slaveholders, because of his loyalty to the institution in returning a runaway nigger, suddenly vanished. He paced the deck in a rage. To add to his fury, old Payson, while I stood at the bows, dripping and grinning, came sailing up before a stiff breeze, and passed within easy speaking distance, Payson pouring in such a volley of words that Skinner was dumbfounded. ‘I’ll make New London too hot for you, you blasted old skinflint!’ cried Payson. ‘You’d sell your own sister just as soon as you’d sell this nigger, you would! Let me catch you ashore, and I’ll give you the blastedest thrashing you ever got yet, you infernal doughface, you! Go and lick the boots of slaveholders. It’s jest what you was born for.’
“And the little sail-boat passed on out of hearing. Payson got in the track of one of the spacious steamboats that ply between the cities of Long Island Sound and New York, and managed to throw a line, so as to be drawn up to the side. We then got on board. In six hours, we were in New York. Payson put me in the proper hands, bade me good by, returned to his sail-boat, and made the best speed he could back to New London, fired with hopes of pitching into that ‘meanest of all mean skippers, old Skinner.’
“This was three years ago. The despatch agents of the underground railroad hurried me off to Canada. As soon as I judged it safe, I returned to New York. Here I got a good situation as head-waiter at Bunker’s. Am married. Have a boy, named Sterling, a year old. Am very happy with my wife and child and my hired piano. But now and then I and my wife have an alarm lest I shall be seized and carried back to slavery.”
Here Mr. Institution finished his story, which we have condensed, generally using, however, his own words. Charlton did not subject him to much cross-questioning. He asked, first, what was the name of the schooner in which Peek had escaped from Texas. It was the Albatross. Charlton made a note. Second, did Mr. Barnwell, Peek’s late master, have an agent in New Orleans? Yes; Peek had often seen the name on packages: P. Herman & Co. And, third, did Peek marry his wife in Canada? Yes. Then she, too, is a fugitive slave, eh?
Peek seemed reluctant to answer this question, and flashed a quick, distrustful glance on Charlton. The latter assumed an air of indifference, and said, “Perhaps you had better not answer that question; it is immaterial.”
Again Peek’s mind was relieved.
“That is enough for the present, Mr. Jacobs,” continued Charlton. “If I have occasion to see you, I can always find you at Bunker’s, I suppose.”