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Updated: May 28, 2025
A few tents and a squad of sleepy men were at the ferry. I handed my order and pass to the sergeant, who looked me over as if he thought it odd that a man of my class should be so equipped to shoot ducks. However, he read my pass and the order for the boat, pushed the skiff into the water, and proposed, as he lifted my snapsack, to let one of his men row me.
I thanked him, but said I fancied she was Whig enough to like the Hessians better. On Second street I bought a smock shirt, rough shoes, and coarse knit stockings, as well as a good snapsack, and, rolling them up securely, left them at home in the hay-loft. My sword and other finery I must needs leave behind me.
It remained to consider the longer road. This led me down the river to a point where I must leave it, shoulder my snapsack, and trudge down the Darby, road, or between it and the river. Somewhere I must cross the highway and strike across-country as I could to the Schuylkill River, and there find means to get over at one of the fords.
And why should he wish me to be away, as clearly he did? and why also malign me to my father I I smiled to think I was where his malice could do me no harm, and, rising, pulled my snapsack straps up on my shoulders, and set my face to the east. Of a sudden I heard to left, "Halt, there!" I saw a long rifle covering me, and above the brush a man's face.
I carefully packed my snapsack, putting the gold in bags at the bottom, and covering it with the flannel shirts and extra shoes which made up my outfit. I could not resist taking my pistols, as I knew that to provide myself as well in camp would not be possible.
"No," he cried. "Here, set your snapsack back of this forge. Put on this leather apron. Smudge your face and hands." It took me but a minute, and here I was, grimy and black, a smith again, with my sack hid under a lot of old iron and a broken bellows. As they rode up some two dozen yagers I let fall the bellows handle, at which my master had set me to work, and went out to the doorway.
I was about to leave home, perhaps forever, but I never in my life went to bed with a more satisfied heart than I bore that night. At break of day I woke, and, stealing downstairs, took gun, powder-horn, and shot, and in the stable loft put the ammunition in the top of my snapsack; then, quickly changing my clothes, concealed those I had put off under the hay, and so set out.
"Good heavens! you are a queer one! We shall see. Are you hurt! No! Great Caesar! you are an awful sight!" "I was tied to that fellow you disposed of, and with your permission I will get my snapsack yonder." "Good; get it. Go with him, corporal, and keep an eye on him." In a half-hour the dead were stripped and pitched aside, the wounded cared for in haste, and the horses caught.
Annoyed no little, for here I meant to land, I turned the boat, still hidden by the tall reeds, and soon drew up the skiff at Bartram's, where, taking gun and snapsack, I went up the slope. I found Mr. William Bartram standing under a fine cypress his father had fetched as a slip from Florida in 1731.
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