Jump Ship to Freedom Read Online Free

anything at all. I mean you take a free white man, he was worth maybe twenty shillings a month in wages, and here I was worth about eighty times that just sitting there. “That’s why we’re worried about getting sold.”
    â€œSold? Why, Uncle wouldn’t sell you, Dan.” He looked a little uneasy, though, and I could tell he wasn’t exactly sure.
    â€œHe might,” I said. “That’s why we want to buy ourselves out first.”
    â€œWell, it’s going to take you a mighty long time to earn a hundred and forty pounds.”
    â€œNo, it won’t,” I said. “We got my daddy’s—” Then I caught myself. “I mean, Mrs. Ivers has got my daddy’s soldiers’ notes for safekeeping. If the Congress makes good on them, we’ll have enough.”
    â€œWhat’s Congress got to do with it? Soldiers’ notes are money, ain’t they?”
    â€œNo, they ain’t. They’re just a promise of money. The government don’t have to pay off on them if they don’t choose to.”
    â€œMaybe they won’t be worth anything at all, then,” Birdsey said.
    â€œThat’s the point of it, Birdsey. Right now we could sell the notes for something.”
    â€œWho’d buy them if they ain’t going to be worth anything?”
    â€œOh, people will buy them cheap on the chance that someday the Congress will pay them at full value. Maybe we could get enough for them to buy one of us free.”
    Birdsey shook his head. “It don’t make much sense to me.”
    â€œNor me, neither,” I said.
    â€œYou ought to ask Uncle about it,” he said.
    But I wasn’t about to do that. We finished eating, climbed back down into the hold, and got the oxen fed and watered. Then we started loading the deck. You didn’t waste space on a ship. We lashed stacks of lumber to the deck, tethered more oxen to the railing, put crates of chickens down in the spaces between everything else.
    And we was just about finished, along toward twilight, when suddenly I saw Mrs. Ivers on the dock, talking to the captain. I knew what they were talking about right away. The first thought that crossed my mind was to slip over the side and sneak back to the house. But even while I was thinking about it, I knew there wasn’t any hope in it. They’d see me, sure.
    So I went on working like nothing was wrong, and in a couple of minutes, sure enough, Captain Ivers hollered out, “Arabus, get down here.”
    â€œYessir,” I said. I walked to the rail and climbed over pretty slow, not being in any hurry to get down there.
    â€œQuickly,” Mrs. Ivers said.
    â€œYessum,” I said. I dropped onto the wharf in front of them. I hardly landed before Captain Ivers hit me and knocked me down hard on the boards.
    â€œGet up,” he shouted.
    â€œI ain’t done nothing, Captain,” I cried, so’s they’d think I didn’t know what I was getting hit for.
    â€œGet up.”
    â€œYessir,” I said. I knelt up and shook my head, like I was sort of groggy. I learned a long time ago that the best thing to do when I got hit was to look as sick and hurt as I could, because nobody likes to bust up a valuable slave.
    â€œGet up.”
    I got up on my feet and got ready to tilt my head toward him when he swung, so as to take the fist on the top of my head, which would hurt him near as much as me. But they fooled me, for Mrs. Ivers lammed me from the other side instead. My head wobbled, and I fell down again. This time the deck spun around, and I had to sit quiet until I could get steady enough to stand up again. “I ain’t done nothing, Captain,” I cried out.
    â€œWhere are those notes?”
    â€œNotes? I don’t know nothing about no notes.”
    He reached down, grabbed me by the shirt front, and jerked me to my feet. “Don’t lie to me boy. You took those notes. Where are