“‘Well’ says he, ‘be a good boy, and I’ll take care on you.’ So we stayed in New York a few days, and back to Albany, and started for New York agin and we had fourteen pretty genteel passengers, and the captain says, ‘now Peter be very attentive to ’em and you’ll git a good many presents from ’em.’ ‘So I cleaned their boots and waited on ’em, and when I got to York I carried their baggage round the city, and when I got to the sloop I counted my money, and had six dollars fifty cents, jist for bein’ polite, and it’s jist as easy to be polite as any way.
“Well, the next mornin’ the captain comes to me about daylight, and hollers, ‘up nig, there’s a present for you on deck.’
“So I hops up in great haste and there was stuck on the sign of the vessel, an advertisement, and ‘reward of one hundred dollars, and all charges paid for catchin’ a large bull-eyed Negro, &c.’ The captain reads that to me, and says very seriously, ‘Peter that’s a great reward. You run down in the cabin and git your breakfast, I must have that hundred dollars; for one hundred dollars don’t grow on every bush.’
“Well, I started and went down, a sobbin’ and cryin’ to get breakfast, and calls the captain down to eat, and he sets down and says he, ‘Peter ain’t you agoin’ to set down and eat somethin’? it will be the last breakfast you’ll eat with us.’
“I says with a very heavy heart, ‘no Sir, I wants no breakfast.’ Arter breakfast says he, ‘now clear off the table, and do up all your things nice and scour your brasses, so that when I get another cook he shan’t say you was a dirty feller.’ So I goes and obeys all his orders, and I shed some tears tu, I tell ye; and then I set down and had a regular-built cryin’ spell, and then the captain comes down and says, ‘you done all your work up nicely?’ ‘Yis Sir,’ ‘well, now go and tie up all your clothes.’ So I did, and I cried louder than ever about it, and he says, ‘I guess you han’t got ’em all have ye?’ So he unties my bundle, and takes all on ’em out one by one, and lays ’em in the berth, and I cried so you could hear me to the forecastle; and finally he turns to me a pleasant look and says, ‘Peter put up your clothes; I’ve no idea of takin’ you back, I’ve done this only to try you; and now I tell you on the _honor of a man_, as long as you stay with me, and be as faithful as you have been, nobody shall take you away from me _alive_; and then I cries ten times worse than ever, I loved the captain so hard. But a mountain rolled off on me, for I tell you to be took right away in the bloom of liberty, arter I’d toiled so hard to git it, and then have all my hopes crushed in a minute, I tell you for awhile I had mor’n I could waller under. But when I got acquain’ted with the captain, I found him a rale abolitionist, for he’d fight for a black man any time, and ☞ Oh! how he did hate slavery: ☜ but then he kind’a loved to run on a body, and then make ’em feel good agin, and he was always a cuttin’ up some sich caper as this; but he was a noble man and I love him yit.