About daylight a freight pulled upon this track and came to a short standstill.
Once more I was fortunate in finding an empty car, and getting into it unobserved.
I was not absolutely sure the darkies had not deceived me, but then a man beating the roads has got to take all kinds of chances, and I was fast learning the fact.
At noon that day I arrived safely in Savannah, that is to say, I arrived within a mile of the town proper, where I ran the risk of breaking my neck by jumping off, but that was much better than being pulled into the yards in broad open daylight to be arrested.
There is one thing peculiar about Savannah, which can't fail to impress a stranger on his first visit. For the size of the town, I think it contains three times as many colored people as any other city in the United States.
That afternoon I found the time to read a chapter in the little Bible my mother had given me. I shall always believe it was the work of a kind Providence that sent me upon the streets of Savannah that night in quest of some one to go with me to Jacksonville. Luckily for me this time too, as subsequent events will prove.
It was past midnight. Again my conveyance was a freight train; this time bound for Jacksonville, Fla., and again I had a darkey for a traveling companion.
We boarded the freight one mile from the city limits at a slow-down crossing. There was no empty car to get into and the only other place was on the end of a loaded flat-car, where we were shielded somewhat from the cold winds blowing over the train.
The rain was coming down in a steady downpour, and had been for two hours or more.
We were still standing close together on the end of the car, and had entered Northern Florida, and lying or sitting down in the rain would have been courting death of cold. There was nothing to do but stand up and take our medicine quietly. The cold winds had chilled us to the very marrow.