all combined to deter me. But I
had counted the cost, and was fully prepared to make the sacrifice.
The time for fulfilling my pledge was then at hand. I must forsake
friends and neighbors, wife and child, or consent to live and die a
slave.

By the permission of my keeper, I started out to work for myself on
Christmas. I went to the Ohio River, which was but a short distance
from Bedford. My excuse for wanting to go there was to get work. High
wages were offered for hands to work in a slaughter-house. But in
place of my going to work there, according to promise, when I arrived
at the river I managed to find a conveyance to cross over into a free
state. I was landed in the village of Madison, Indiana, where
steamboats were landing every day and night, passing up and down the
river, which afforded me a good opportunity of getting a boat passage
to Cincinnati. My anticipation being worked up to the highest pitch,
no sooner was the curtain of night dropped over the village, than I
secreted myself where no one could see me, and changed my suit ready
for the passage. Soon I heard the welcome sound of a Steamboat coming
up the river Ohio, which was soon to waft me beyond the limits of the
human slave markets of Kentucky. When the boat had landed at Madison,
notwithstanding my strong desire to get off, my heart trembled within
me in view of the great danger to which I was exposed in taking
passage on board of a Southern Steamboat; hence before I took passage,
I kneeled down before the Great I Am, and prayed for his aid and
protection, which He bountifully bestowed even beyond my expectation;
for I felt myself to be unworthy. I then stept boldly on the deck of
this splendid swift-running Steamer, bound for the city of Cincinnati.
This being the first voyage that I had ever taken on board of a
Steamboat, I was filled with fear and excitement, knowing that I was
surrounded by the vilest enemies of God and man, liable to be seized
and bound hand and foot, by any white man, and taken back into
captivity. But I crowded myself back from the light among the deck
passengers, where it would be difficult to distinguish me from a white
man. Every time during the night that the mate came round with a
light after the hands, I was afraid he would see I was a colored man,
and take me up; hence I kept from the light as much as possible. Some
men love darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil; but
this was not the case with mys