"Then did that Scripture come into my mind, 'They that trust in the Lord shall never be confounded.' I believed it, and got out of the wagon unperceived, and went into the bushes. There were three wagons in company: when they missed me, they looked round some time for me, but not finding me, they went on; and that night I travelled through thunder, lightning, and rain, a considerable distance."
His trials and difficulties in getting along were many and various; but at Petersburg he met a man from his neighborhood, circumstanced like himself: they got a small boat, went down James River, and landed on the eastern shore of Chesapeake Bay, and travelled to Hunting Creek, where their wives were. "But," says he, "we found little or no satisfaction, for we were hunted like partridges on the mountains."
His poor companion, being threatened again with slavery, in attempting to escape, was pursued and killed; on which Solomon makes the following remarks: "Now, reader, you have heard of the end of my fellow-sufferer, but I remain as yet a monument of mercy, thrown up and down on life's tempestuous sea; sometimes feeling an earnest desire to go away and be at rest; but I travail on, in hopes of overcoming at my last combat.
"It being thought best for me to leave Virginia, I went to Dover, in Delaware, the distance of about one hundred and twenty miles." By travelling in the night, and laying by in the day-time, he at length reached that place, but not without great difficulty, from being hunted and pursued.
In concluding this part of his narrative, he says, "Oh, what pains God takes to help His otherwise helpless creatures! Oh, that His kindness and care were more considered and laid to heart! and then there would not be that cause to complain that 'the ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib, but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider;' but they would see that they are of more value than many sparrows; and that they are not their own, but bought with a price. Now, unto the King immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be glory and honor, dominion and power, now and forever. Amen."
In the second part of his narrative, he proceeds by remarking, "Seventh month, 24th, 1799, I got to Camden, where my master soon came from Virginia and found me, though he had not seen me since he put me on board the back-country wagon, nearly three or four hundred miles from Camden. Upon first sight, he asked me what I was going to do. I said, 'Now, master, I have suffered a great deal, and seen a great deal of trouble; I think you might let me go for little or nothing.' He said, 'I won't do that; but if you will give me forty pounds bond and good security, you may be free.'"
After much conversation between them on the subject of his right to freedom, he continues: "Finally, he sold my time for eighty dollars, and I went to work, and worked it out in a shorter time than he gave me, and then I was a free man. And when I came to think that the yoke was off my neck, and how it was taken off, I was made to wonder and admire, and to adore the order of kind Providence, which assisted me in all my way."
Here he very feelingly recites the trials and exercises of mind that attended him for not adhering to that wisdom and goodness of his Creator, which had been so marvellously manifested for his deliverance, and then proceeds to relate the circumstances respecting his wife and children. "My wife was born a slave, and remained one until she was thirty-two years of age; when her master, falling out with her, proposed sending her, with my eldest daughter, about three months old, into the back country.
"To go with her, I knew not where, or to buy her at his price, brought me to a stand; but, by the pleading of his wife and little daughter, he agreed to let me have her for one hundred and thirty-three dollars and a third, which is thirty-one pounds Virginia money. I paid what money I had saved since paying for my own freedom, and the rest as I earned it, and she was manumitted. But I had one child in bondage, my only son, and having worked through the purchase of myself and wife, I thought I would give up my son to the ordering of Divine Providence.