ch prevailed there. On two occasions, while there, I came near losing
my life. I was driving bolts in the hold, through the keelson, with
Hays. In its course, the bolt bent. Hays cursed me, and said that it was
my blow which bent the bolt. I denied this, and charged it upon him. In
a fit of rage he seized an adze, and darted toward me. I met him with a
maul, and parried his blow, or I should have then lost my life. A son of
old Tom Lanman (the latter's double murder I have elsewhere charged upon
him), in the spirit of his miserable father, made an assault upon me,
but the blow with his maul missed me. After the united assault of North,
Stewart, Hays and Humphreys, finding that the carpenters were as bitter
toward me as the apprentices, and that the latter were probably set
on by the former, I found my only chances for life was in flight. I
succeeded in getting away, without an additional blow. To strike a white
man, was death, by Lynch law, in Gardiner's ship yard; nor was there
much of any other law toward colored people, at that time, in any other
part of Maryland. The whole sentiment of Baltimore was murderous.

After making my escape from the ship yard, I went straight home, and
related the story of the outrage to Master Hugh Auld; and it is due to
him to say, that his conduct--though he was not a religious man--was
every way more humane than that of his brother, Thomas, when I went to
the latter in a somewhat similar plight, from the hands of _"Brother
Edward Covey."_ He listened attentively to my narration of the
circumstances leading to the ruffianly outrage, and gave many proofs
of his strong indignation at what was done. Hugh was a rough, but
manly-hearted fellow, and, at this time, his best nature showed itself.
{244}

The heart of my once almost over-kind mistress, Sophia, was again melted
in pity toward me. My puffed-out eye, and my scarred and blood-covered
face, moved the dear lady to tears. She kindly drew a chair by me, and
with friendly, consoling words, she took water, and washed the blood
from my face. No mother's hand could have been more tender than hers.
She bound up my head, and covered my wounded eye with a lean piece of
fresh beef. It was almost compensation for the murderous assault, and
my suffering, that it furnished and occasion for the manifestation, once
more, of the orignally(sic) characteristic kindness of my mistress. Her
affectionate heart was not yet dead, though much hardened by time