"Let my punishment be what it may, either with the lash or by selling me away from my friends and home; let my destiny be what you please, I can never engage in this business for the sake of getting free." They said I should not be sold nor punished with the lash for what I had done, but I should be carried back to Bedford, to live with my wife.

Yet when the boat got to where we should have landed, she wafted by without making any stop.

I felt awful in view of never seeing my family again; they asked what was the matter?
what made me look so cast down?
I informed them that I knew I was to be sold in the Louisville slave market, or in New Orleans, and I never expected to see my family again.

But they tried to pacify me by promising not to sell me to a slave trader who would take me off to New Orleans; cautioning me at the same time not to let it be known that I had been a runaway.

This would very much lessen the value of me in market.