We disrobed, au naturel. The little Mayo boy and the others set to work on us.
From the inside of the wagon hubs was scooped the blackest, deadliest grease the malignity of man has ever invented. The axles of the vehicles, especially one old dump cart, were rich with it.
Over the sunburned pelts of our little bodies the stuff was smeared in handfuls. It smelled frightfully but we remembered how it must feel to be a real slave, and stood it as stoically as possible.
From head to foot we were covered with the green-black “goo.” Our handlers took especial care to rub it well into our hair and ears. When that smearing “was called a job”, we were Africans with a vengeance. And the odor shrieked to heaven.
“But we can’t put on our clothes with this stuff all over us!” wailed Nat suddenly.
“Slaves in a dismal swamp don’t need no clothes,” the Mayo boy contended. “Start off just like you are and it’ll make it harder to hunt you.”
“But somebody might see us without any clothes and arrest us!”
“That’s why it’s goin’ to make it harder to hunt you; you’ll keep out of sight better without clothes.”
The dismal swamp was a cat-tail bog over on the Hastings farm. Thither by back lanes we were escorted, the “ferocious bloodhounds” being the Mayo boy’s sky terrier, Pink, and Nat’s shepherd dog, Ned, with the aforesaid immunity from the depredations of skunks.
Nat and I were turned loose like two justly celebrated gold-dust twins, minus all concessions to civilization. And in the next two hours we became relieved that there had been an Emancipation Proclamation.