Chapter Eleven Summary

Chapter Eleven A few days after the sugar cane harvest was complete, Johannes informed Georg and Louisa it was time for him to go. He said his goodbyes to his friends and began walking towards the river. For the past several days he had been loading a small keelboat he purchased with provisions for the trip upriver to Ohio. As he was leaving, he heard Louisa scolding her new house slave after arranging her clothing incorrectly and told her she would be punished if she did not fix them immediately. She slapped the slave woman’s hand and made her do it again. The young black woman saw him leaving as her two children were working in the stables cleaning up after the horses. He started walking towards the river with his pack on his shoulders.
Several of the field slaves looked up as he walked past the sugar cane fields. As he grew closer to the river he heard shouting and gunfire in the woods. He saw several bounty hunters on horseback chasing someone through the woods. He shuddered as he remembered his own escape from the Prussian army and continued toward the skiff he had purchased. The previous owner had told him it was the perfect means to go up the river and even offered him goods to sell to the plantation’s owners to help pay for his journey. He agreed and loaded bright cloth and other household goods into the bottom of the boat. After spending the night on his boat, he went to town to pick up some more provisions for his journey upriver. He was tired when he finally returned to his boat and the sun was setting. The shopkeepers had driven a hard bargain and he was in a foul mood. As he approached his boat he thought he saw something moving in the bottom of the boat. He had carefully covered the boat with leaves and branches from a nearby tree to thwart any thieves and they appeared to have been pushed aside. Slowly, he approached the boat and saw the tarp he used to hide his stores from thieves was turned back and puffed up. He pulled his knife out of his belt and crept towards the tarp. Slowly, he pulled the tarp back and was surprised to see the black slave woman and her two children. Just then he heard shouting and a man on horseback rode up to him just as he was climbing on board his boat. The man on horseback approached him wearing the semblance of a uniform including a sword at his side. Johannes paled as he saw him, remembering the Prussian Officer from so long ago. The man shouted to him from the riverbank. “Did you see a black woman with two young children?” Johannes froze for a second and then rapidly regained his senses and shook his head and climbed onboard. The man on horseback turned his horse away and headed further down along the river road at a trot. The black slave woman was startled and the two children began to cry loudly. At that instant, the bounty hunter reappeared out of the woods and raised his pistol and pointed it directly at Johannes. “You told me that you never saw any runaway slaves, and now they are on your boat” He snarled Johannes just stammered and lied and said he never saw them before. He told him they must have been stowaways on his boat. The bounty hunter dismounted and walked towards Johannes and the woman with his pistol raised. He barked at the woman and her children, “Get off the boat now and come with me!” The slave woman turned towards Johannes with a pleading look but slowly grabbed her children’s hands and climbed out of the boat onto the riverbank. The bounty hunter quickly grabbed her and placed metal shackles on her wrists and bound the two children`s hands with a small piece of rope. He pointed them towards his horse with his pistol and ordered them to march. Johannes`s mind began to whirl. He started to have flashbacks of the villagers in Baden being evicted out of their homes, of Stanislaus and Karolina holding their two children and marching in the cold and snow with Prussian soldier’s rifles and bayonets pointed at their backs. He also remembered the death of the young mother at the hands of the Prussian officer and the subsequent killing of her two children as he ran away in the woods. The muscles of his neck began to throb, he climbed down from his boat and his hand tightened around the knife and he ran directly towards the bounty hunter. With the butt of his knife, he knocked him on the back of his head and he fell to the ground out cold before he could turn and fire his pistol. Johannes grabbed the pistol and quickly rifled through the man’s clothing to find the slave woman’s bill of sale, warrants and any other type of official papers he may be carrying. He told the woman and her two children to hurry and follow him and he ran back to his boat. The slave woman grabbed her two children and followed him.
He bounded up the side of the boat, grabbed her by the hand and pulled her and her two children aboard. He told them to go back to the bottom of the boat and he began pushing the boat away from the shore. As quickly as he could, he began to push and steer the boat upriver, looking back towards the banks of the river in case the bounty hunter woke up or any of his friends would chase them. He rowed as quickly as he could, pushing against the current. After serial hours he began to tire and dare pull the boat back to shore of the river under the cover of darkness. He helped the woman take off her metal shackles and untied the two children. He offered them some food and drink and then sat back exhausted. The two children ate the food quickly and fell fast asleep in the bottom of the boat after their miraculous escape. The black slave woman just looked at him and thanked him speaking in French. He just nodded at her and she curled up next to her children to sleep. Johannes kept watching overnight in case the bounty hunter or his friends returned. Johannes, with the shock and adrenaline slowly wearing off, realized that he had stolen these slaves. He pulled out the map, his friends had given him of their new country and remembered how they had complained to him how any slave that could cross the Ohio River would be free. They knew of several plantation owners that had lost quite a lot of money from runaway slaves. Johannes tried to determine the best route to take under the dim
moonlight.