By this time it was getting near day-light and we left the road and went off a mile or so among the hills of the forest, where we struck camp for the day.  We then picked our turkey, dressed our pigs, and cooked two of them.  We got the hair off by singeing them over the fire, and after we had eaten all we wanted, one of us slept while the other watched.  We had flint, punk, and powder to strike fire with.  A little after dark the next night, we started on our way.

Buy about ten o’clock that night just as we were passing through a thick skirt of woods, five men sprang out before us with fire-arms, swearing if we moved another step, they would shoot us down; and each man having a gun drawn up for shooting we had no chance to make any defence, and surrendered sooner than run the risk of being killed.

They had been lying in wait for us there, for several hours.  They had seen a reward out, for notices were put up in the most public places, that fifty dollars would be paid for me, dead or alive, if I should not return home within so many days.  And the reader will remember that neither Jack nor myself was able to read the advertisement.  It was of very little consequence with the slave catchers, whether they killed us or took us alive, for the reward was the same to them.

After we were taken and tied, one of the men declared to me that he would have shot me dead just as sure as he lived, if I had moved one step after they commanded us to stop.  He had his gun levelled at my breast, already cocked, and his finger on the trigger.  The way they came to find us out was from the circumstance of Jack’s taking the man’s hat in connection with the advertisement.  The man whose hat was taken was drunk; and the next morning when he came to look for his hat it was gone and Jack’s old hat lying in the place of it; and in looking round he saw the tracks of two persons in the dust, who had passed during the night, and one of them having but three toes on one foot.  He followed these tracks until they came to a large mud pond in a lane on one side of which a person might pass dry shod; but the man with three toes on one foot had plunged through the mud.  This led the man to think there must be runaway slaves, and from out of that neighborhood; for all persons in that settlement knew which side of that mud hole to go.  He then got others to go with him, and they followed us until our track left the road.  They supposed that we had gone off in the woods to lay by until night, after which we should pursue our course.

After we were captured they took us off several miles to where one of them lived, and kept us over night.  One of our pigs was cooked for us to eat that night; and the turkey the next morning.  But we were both tied that night with our hands behind us, and our feet were also tied.  The doors were locked, and a bedstead was set against the front door, and two men slept in it to prevent our getting out in the night.  They said that they knew how to catch runaway negroes, and how to keep them after they were caught.