“I’d been there four or five weeks, and I heard master makin’ a despod cussin’ and swearin’ in the evenin’, and I heard him over-say, ‘I’ll settle with the black cuss to-morrow; I’ll have his hide tanned.’
“So the next day, arter breakfast, mistress orders me down into the back yard, and I found two hundred slaves there; and there was an old man there with a gray head, stripped and drawed over a whipping-block his hands tied down, and the big tears a rollin’ down his face; and he looked exactly like some old gray headed, sun-burnt revolutioner; and a white man stood over him with a cat-o’-nine-tails in his hand, and he was to give him one hundred lashes. ☜ And he says, ‘now look on all on ye, and if you git into a scrape you’ll have this cat-o’-nine-tails wrapped round you;’ and then he begun to whip, and he hadn’t struck mor’n two or three blows, afore I see the blood run, and he was stark naked, and his back and body was all over covered with scars, and he says in kind’a broken language, ‘Oh! massa don’t kill me.’ ‘Tan his hide,’ says master, and he kept on whippin’, and the old man groaned like as if he was a dyin’, and he got the hundred lashes, ☜ and then was untied and told to go about his work; and I looked at the block, and it was kivered with blood, and that same block didn’t git clear from blood as long as I stayed there. ☜
“‘Well, this spectacle affected me so, I could scarcely git about the house, for I expected next would be my turn; and I was so afraid I shouldn’t do right I didn’t half do my work.
“‘It wore upon me so I grew poor through fear and grief. I would look out and see the two hundred slaves come into the back yard to be fed with rice, and they had the value of about a quart of rice a day, I guess.
“‘Every day, more or less would be whipped till the blood run to the ground; and every day fresh blood could be seen on the block,—and what for I never found out, for I darn’t ax any body, and I had no liberty of saying any thing to the field hands.
‘“I used often to look out of the window to see people pass and repass, and see if I couldn’t see somebody that I knew; and I finally got sick, and was kept down some time, and I jist dragged about and darn’t say one word, for I should have been put on the _plantation for bein’ sick_! and I meant to do the best I could till I dropped down dead; but the almost whole cause on it was grief, and the rest was cruel hardship. Well, things got so, I thought I must die soon, and in the height of my sorrow, I looked out and see Samuel Macy—Master Macy’s second son, walkin’ along the street, and I could hardly believe my eyes; and I was stand in’ in the door, and I catches the broom, and goes down the steps a sweepin’, and calls him by name as he comes along, and I tells him a short story, and he says ‘I’ll git thee free, only be patient a few weeks.’ I neither sees nor hears a word on him for over four weeks, but I was borne up by hope, and that made my troubles lighter. Well, in about four weeks, one day, jist arter dinner, there comes a gentleman and raps at the front door, and I goes and opens the door, and there stood old Master Macy, and I flies and hugs him, and he says ‘how does thee do, Susan?’ I couldn’t speak, and as soon as I could I tells my story; and Master Macy then speaks to mistress, who heard the talk and had come out of the parlor, and says, ‘this girl is a member of my family, and I shall take her,’ and then master come in and abused Master Macy dreadfully; but he says, ‘come along with me, Susan;’ and, without a bonnet or anything on to go out with I took him by the hand, and went down to the ship; and, afore I had finished my story, an officer comes and takes old Master Macy, and he leaves me in the care of his son Samuel, aboard, and he was up street about three hours, tendin’ a law-suit, and then he come back, and about nine o’clock that evenin’ we hauled off from that cussed shore, and in two weeks we reached New York, and here I am, in Master Macy’s old kitchen.