Читать книгу Chains and Freedom: or, The Life and Adventures of Peter Wheeler, a Colored Man Yet Living онлайн

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A. “Did you let go, Peter?”

P. “Let go? No! I tell ye I didn’t; the hog got hold of his heel, and bit the ball right off; but when he let go that time, I fetched a dreadful lift, and I got him over the pen, safe and sound, only he was badly bit.

“And while I think of it, one day Mistress took me to go with her through the Cedar Swamp to see some Satan, only she took me as she said to keep the snakes off. It was two miles through the woods, and we went on a road of cedar-rails, and when we got into the swamp, I see a big old-fashioned cat owl a settin’ on a limb up ’bout fifteen foot from the ground I guess; and as I’d heard an owl couldn’t see in the day time, I thought I’d creep up slily, and catch him, and I says ‘Mistress,’ says I, ‘will you wait?’ and she says, ‘yis, if you’ll be quick.’ And so up I got, and jist as I was agoin to grab him, he jumped down, and lit on my head, and planted his big claws in my wool and begun to peck, and I hollered like a loon, and swung off, and down I come, and he stuck tight and pecked worse than ever. I hollows for Mistress, and by this time she comes up with a club, and she pounded the old feller, but he wouldn’t git off, and she pounded him till he was dead; and his claws stuck so tight in my wool, Mistress had to cut ’em out with my jack-knife, and up I got, glad ’nough to git off as I did; and I crawled out of the mud, and the blood come a runnin’ down my head, and I was clawed and pecked like a good feller, but I didn’t go owlin’ agin very soon, I tell ye.”