All night, we walked as a coffle of the dead. Olakunde and I were roped together, our hands bound, and Clippinger and Bono behind us, driving us. Our muskets were slung in a sack which Bono carried. We wore no shirts nor shoes.

We walked now upon the road. We passed through villages.

We came upon torches and a crowd of men who blocked the road — slave patrollers seeking runaways. They were fortified with drink and incendiary slander.

“Where’s you headed with your Negroes?” asked one of them.

“Nansemond County,” the Serjeant answered. “They run away from home.”

“See that. Long way from home.”

“They was seeking Lord Dunmore.”

It seemed an innocuous excuse; and yet, it spoken, the man took a greater interest in us, stepping close and glaring into our faces.

I dropped my head so I did not look upon him.

He examined Olakunde, and then said, “Cut-face son of a bitch.”

Olakunde returned his look.

“You put down your head,” the man demanded. Olakunde would not budge. The man reached out, gently cradled the back of Olakunde’s skull, and forced my friend to look down, and then to fall upon his knees. As we were yoked together, this forced me down as well.

When the patroller retracted his hand, Olakunde did not lift his visage again.

The patroller resumed, “Run to Dunmore?”

Clippinger nodded.

“Then you gots take them to the Committee of Safety. They pay you.”

Clippinger, sensing the danger of an escort, did not argue, but replied, “Where do I go? For the Committee?”

The man gave us directions; and told Olakunde and me to stir a bone and get up — we had a real long journey ahead of us. With that blessing, the patroller bade us all a jeering farewell.

As we passed through the knot of them, men mocked us. “You pleased now, honey? You real happy now?”

We traversing a mile farther along the road, Serjeant Clippinger began to press upon us a new plan. “This, boys, is what we does. I delivers you up to the Committee, and get the fee, then tomorrow night, I hies you out of the jail. Then we has a guinea or two to show for our trouble.”

“No, sir,” said Bono simply.

We walked for a ways in silence. Clippinger at this point continued, “You ain’t in any danger, because even if they try you and ask you who your master is, you can’t give testimony. Y’ain’t people. You can’t turn evidence against yourself. I tell you. You can’t. No more than a barrel or a dog or such-like. And no one else knows you, so no one else can turn evidence against you. So they hold you, and then I slips in, look you, I slips in at night and I frees you.”

“No, sir,” Bono repeated. We walked farther.

Serjeant Clippinger said, “I’m your commanding officer.”

“Sir, if you do persist in recommending this,” said Bono, “I shall kill you.”

Following this, we walked onward without speaking.

When we stopped to rest in a copse, we did not all sleep, but one at a time stayed awake to watch the Serjeant and make sure he attempted no act against us.

We awoke before dawn to the sound of horns blown on plantations to call the slaves to toil. We began again our march.