Escapes! (23 page)
“Well, sir, right or no right, we shan't let you go,” was the cold reply.
A few moments of silence followed. Ellen and William looked at each other but were afraid to speak, in case they made a mistake that would show who they really were. They knew the officers could throw them in jail, and then it would only be a matter of time before their real identities were discovered and they were driven back to slavery. A wrong word now would be fatal.
Just then the conductor of the train they had left stepped in. He commented that they had indeed come on his train, and he left the room. The bell rang to signal their train's departure, and the sudden noise made everyone jump â all eyes fixed more keenly on them. Soon it would be too late.
The officer ran his fingers through his hair, and finally said, “I really don't know what to do; I calculate it is all right.” He let them pass, grumbling, “As he is not well, it is a pity to stop him here.”
Ellen thanked him and hobbled as quickly as she could with her cane toward her carriage. William leapt into his own railcar just as the train was leaving the platform.
Before long the train pulled to a halt alongside a river, where a ferry boat would carry the passengers to a train on the other side. When a porter asked Ellen to leave her seat and head for the ferry, she stood up and looked around for William. He always appeared as soon as the train stopped to “assist” her. Now he was nowhere in sight. On the platform she asked the conductor if he had seen her slave.
“No, sir,” he said. “I haven't seen anything of him for some time.” He added slyly, “I have no doubt he has run away, and is in Philadelphia, free, long before now.”
Her panic rising, Ellen asked if he would look for William. “I am not a slave hunter,” he huffed, and left her.
It was cold, dark, and raining as Ellen stood alone. Her mind started racing with possibilities â had William been left behind in Baltimore... or been kidnapped by slave catchers? Then with horror she remembered â she had no money. They had left it all with William because pickpockets wouldn't bother stealing from a slave. She looked down at the tickets in her hand, their tickets to freedom. They seemed worthless now that she had lost William.
Her time was up â everyone else had boarded the ferry. There's no going back, she thought. All she could do was press on to Philadelphia, and hope that someday she would find him.
William was closer than Ellen thought. They had been traveling day and night and sleeping very little. Fear and excitement had kept them awake until now. But finally, within hours of Philadelphia, William had nodded off. Sound asleep, he was tumbled out with the luggage onto a baggage boat.
A guard later found William and shook him awake. “Your master is scared half to death about you,” he said.
William sat up, frightened â had something happened to Ellen? “Why?” he gasped.
“He thinks you have run away from him,” the guard replied.
Relieved, William hurried to Ellen to let her know what had happened. The conductor and the guard laughed as if it were all a great joke. Then the guard took William aside and told him he really should run away once they got to Philadelphia.
“No, sir,” William replied. “I shall never run away from such a good master.” The guard was stunned, but William wasn't going to let anyone in on their secret â not yet.
Back in his own railcar, another passenger quietly told William of a boarding house in Philadelphia where he would be safe if he ran away. A station on the Underground Railroad! William thanked him, but did not say any more.
Just before dawn, William stuck his head out the train window. He could see flickering lights ahead in the distance. Then he heard a passenger say to his friend, “Wake up... we are at Philadelphia!” William felt as if a heavy burden had slipped off his back. He stared at the glittering city as the train sped on, and the sight made him lightheaded.
It was Christmas Day. Before the train had fully stopped, William was already running to Ellen's carriage. They hurried into a cab and William gave the driver the address of the boarding house he had heard about.
“Thank God, William, we are safe!” Ellen exclaimed, and broke into sobs. After pretending for so long, she felt drained. She leaned heavily on William as they stepped out of the cab and climbed the stairs to their room.
Ellen rested a while, then took off her disguise and changed into the women's clothing she had packed. She and William walked into the sitting room and asked to see the landlord. The man was confused. What happened to the young cotton planter he had seen arrive?
“But where is your master?” he asked William. William pointed to Ellen. “I'm not joking,” the landlord replied, becoming annoyed.
It took some time to convince him of who they were! In the end, the innkeeper sent for some antislavery friends who could help them decide what to do next. William and Ellen had planned to go to Canada, following the Underground Railroad further north. But their new friends warned them that December in Canada would be much colder than they were used to in Georgia. They would face a hard first winter in an unfamiliar place.
But staying in Philadelphia wouldn't be safe either â slave catchers sometimes kidnapped runaways there, even though it was in a free state. Boston might be a better choice. Most people there were so against slavery that slave hunters didn't dare try. And so it was decided. Ellen and William stayed with a Quaker family until they were ready to leave for Boston, and a new life.
Even in Boston, the Crafts did not feel safe for long, however. Two years later, the Fugitive Slave Bill was passed. Slave catchers could now legally follow runaways into the free states and bring them back. With the help of Underground Railroad workers, Ellen and William escaped a warrant for their arrest and fled to Halifax, where they boarded a ship for England.
Abbott, G.
Great Escapes from the Tower of London.
London: Heinemann, 1982.
The Acts of Stephen, Roger of Wendover's Flowers of History.
Excerpted in
Escape: An Anthology.
Edited by Michael Mason. London: Chatto & Windus, 1996.
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
and
The Peterborough Chronicle.
The Online Medieval and Classical Library, University of California, Berkeley (
omacl.org/Anglo
).
Appleby, John T.
The Troubled Reign of King Stephen.
New York: Barnes & Noble Inc., 1970.
Bader, Douglas.
Fight for the Sky: The Story of the Spitfire and the
Hurricane.
London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1973.
Bradley, Keith R.
Slavery and Rebellion in the Roman World:
140 B.C.â70 B.C.
Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1989.
Brickhill, Paul.
Reach for the Sky: The Story of Douglas Bader.
London: Collins, 1954, 1967.
Chamberlin, Russell.
The Tower of London: An Illustrated
History.
London: Webb & Bower Ltd., 1989.
Chancellor, Henry.
Colditz: The Definitive History.
London: Hodder and Stoughton, 2001.
Craft, William. “Running a Thousand Miles to Freedom.” In
Great Slave Narratives: Selected and Introduced by Arna Bontemps.
Boston: Beacon Press, 1969.
Eggers, Reinhold.
Colditz: The German Story.
Translated and edited by Howard Gee. London: Robert Hale Ltd., 1961 (Charnwood Edition 1999).
Foot, M. R. D. and J. M. Langley.
MI9: Escape and Evasion
1939 â1945.
London: Bodley Head, 1979.
Hilton, Christopher.
The Wall: The People's Story.
Phoenix Mill, Great Britain: Sutton Publishing Ltd., 2001.
Jackson, Robert.
Douglas Bader: A Biography.
London: Arthur Barker Ltd., 1983.
Kiger, Patrick. “The Escape Psyche.” From the Learning Channel/Discovery website
Larive, E.H.
The Man Who Came in from Colditz.
London: Robert Hale Ltd., 1975.
“A Letter from the Countess of Nithsdale, 1827 (describing events of 1716).” In
Escape: An Anthology,
edited by Michael Mason. London: Chatto & Windus, 1996.
Lucas, Laddie.
Flying Colours: The Epic Story of Douglas Bader.
London: Hutchinson & Co., 1982.
McFadden, Robert D., Joseph B. Treaster and Maurice Carroll.
No Hiding Place: The New York Times Inside Report on
the Hostage Crisis.
New York: Times Books, 1981.
Mears, Kenneth J.
The Tower of London: 900 Years of English
History.
Oxford: Phaidon Press, 1988.
“Memoirs of Henry Masers de Latude, during a Confinement of Thirty-five Years in the State Prisons of France.” English translation, 1787. Excerpted in
Escape: An Anthology.
Edited by Michael Mason. London: Chatto & Windus, 1996.
Memoirs of the Bastille by Latude and Linguet.
(Including “Despotism Unmasked,” a memoir by Jean Henri Masers de Latude) Translated by J. and S.F. Mills Whitman. London: George Routledge & Sons Ltd., 1927.
Ortzen, Len.
Stories of Famous Shipwrecks.
London: Arthur Barker Ltd., 1974.
Pelletier, Jean and Claude Adams.
The Canadian Caper.
Toronto: Macmillan, 1981.
Petschull, Jürgen.
With the Wind to the West: The Great Balloon
Escape.
Translated by Courtney Searls. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1981.
Prestwich, Michael.
Armies and Warfare in the Middle Ages.
New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996.
Quétel, Claude.
Escape from the Bastille: The Life and Legend
of Latude.
Translated by Christopher Sharp. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990.
Reid, P.R.
Colditz: The Full Story.
London: Macmillan, 1984.
Riley, James.
Sufferings in Africa: Captain Riley's Narrative.
(First published 1817) New York: Clarkson Potter, 2000.
Shaw, Brent D., ed. and trans.
Spartacus and the Slave Wars: A Brief
History with Documents.
New York: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2001.
Still, William (Secretary of Pennsylvania Anti-slavery Society's General Vigilance Committee).
The Underground Railroad: A
Record.
Chicago: Johnson Publishing Company Inc., 1970 (first published 1871).
Warner, Philip.
The Medieval Castle: Life in a Fortress in Peace
and War.
London: Arthur Barker Ltd., 1972.
William of Malmesbury's
Historia Novella,
in
Contemporary
Chronicles of the Middle Ages
translated by Joseph Stephenson (1850, repr. 1988). Excerpted on California State University Northridge website (
www.csun.edu
).
Anders, Robert,
â¦
-
â
,
â¡
,
â
-
â
balloon, balloon flight,
â¦
-
â
Bastille,
â¦
,
â
-
â¡
,
â
,
â
-
â¦â¦
Bazargan, Mehdi, Prime Minister,
â¦
Berlin,
â¦
Bishop, Billy,
â¦
Brown, Henry “Box,”
â¦
Carter, Jimmy, President,
â¦
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA),
â¦
-
â
Clark, Joe, Prime Minister,
â¦