Chapter Fifteen.
A Dash for Freedom.
To find one’s self sold into slavery must be a thoroughly unpleasant experience; yet when George Leicester that night found himself actually a slave, the tenant of a slave-cabin, and with slaves only for his future companions and associates, he felt by no means discouraged. There was no oppressive feeling of despair weighing down his heart and crushing his spirit into utter hopelessness; on the contrary, he had the feeling as if a great load of care and anxiety had been lifted from off his heart; he now knew the worst of what was to befall him; he fully recognised that the life before him was to be one of unrequited hardship at least, and, it might be, also of suffering and bitter tyranny; but he braced himself to meet it all, whatever it might be, with unflinching fortitude, sustained by the steadfast, inextinguishable hope of eventual escape.
This hope indeed of eventual escape rose high within his breast, now that he had actually arrived upon the spot from which it must be made. The estate of which he was now one of the chattels was that of a tobacco and sugar planter. Of its extent he could at present form no opinion; but he saw that it was of considerable size, the whole of the cultivated ground within sight being the property of his owner. It was situated upon a tolerably level plain, with a road running through it, from the main road along which they had recently travelled, up to the planter’s house, a wide straggling stone structure, with a thatched roof and a verandah all round, occupying the summit of a slight eminence nearly in the middle of the estate. Behind the house, at a distance of some twenty yards, stood another building, which George rightly guessed to be the stables; the slave-huts, of which there were thirty-four, were built, at a distance of about a quarter of a mile from the house, on a gentle slope, at the foot of which stood the boiling-house and sugar-mill, the store-houses, the tobacco factory, etcetera; and just beyond them, again, ran a tiny sparkling stream, from which was obtained the power for driving the crushing machinery.
The slave-cabins were wholly unenclosed, and George had not failed to notice on his arrival upon the estate that, though it was certainly fenced in, the fencing consisted of nothing more than a common rough post-and-rail fence, evidently intended merely to keep out cattle, and in his innocence he began to think that escape from such a place would prove a very easy matter, after all. “What, indeed,” he asked himself, “was to prevent his rising from his bed upon the very first favourable night which should arrive, and quietly walking off the estate?” What, indeed?
But escape was far too precious a thing to be risked by being undertaken in ignorance of whatever perils might attend the attempt, so he resolved that for the present he would not attempt to frame any plans whatever; he felt pretty certain that, as a new acquisition, he would be closely watched for some time to come by those who might have the more immediate charge of him, and his first task, he told himself, must be to disarm any suspicion which might exist in their minds as to an intention on his part to escape. The time necessary to the accomplishment of this might also be profitably employed in acquiring a knowledge of Spanish, without which he fully realised that his attempt must inevitably fail; and he believed that, by the time he had thus paved the way for the great attempt, his ingenuity would have proved sufficient to gain without suspicion from his fellow-slaves a tolerably accurate idea of the perils and difficulties with which he would have to contend.
He took the lad Tom into his confidence at once, intending, of course, that the poor boy should, if he were willing to incur the risk, go with him and Walford, and share with them at least the chance of freedom; and so, from the very first day of their thraldom, there were two keen, intelligent brains incessantly at work, diligently clearing the way to recovered liberty. To Walford George said nothing whatever of his purpose; the unfortunate wretch could not possibly aid them, and there was the possibility that he might unwittingly betray them.
At six o’clock next morning the great bell at the engine-house rang, this being the signal for the slaves to turn out and get breakfast. Half an hour was allowed for this, and at half-past six they were formed into gangs, and marched off to the fields in charge of the overseers.
George and Walford were handed a hoe apiece, and attached to one of the gangs detailed for work in the tobacco-fields. The lad Tom was attached to another gang, and he spent his first day of slave-labour among the sugar-cane.