bystanders, flourishing a dirk in my face, exclaimed, "If I was in his
place, I'd put this through you!" At Piney Point, one of the company
proposed to hang me up to the yard-arm, and make me confess; but the
more influential of those on board were not ready for any such
violence, though all were exceedingly anxious to get out of me the
history of the expedition, and who my employers were. That I had
employers, and persons of note too, was taken for granted on all hands;
nor did I think it worth my while to contradict it, though I declined
steadily to give any information on that point. Sayres and English very
readily told all that they knew. English, especially, was in a great
state of alarm, and cried most bitterly. I pitied him much, besides
feeling some compunctions at getting him thus into difficulty; and, upon
the representations which I made, that he came to Washington in perfect
ignorance of the object of the expedition, he was finally untied. As
Sayres was obliged to admit that he came to Washington to take away
colored passengers, he was not regarded with so much favor. But it was
evidently me whom they looked upon as the chief culprit, alone
possessing a knowledge of the history and origin of the expedition,
which they were so anxious to unravel. They accordingly went to work
very artfully to worm this secret out of me. I was placed in charge of
one Orme, a police-officer of Georgetown, whose manner towards me was
such as to inspire me with a certain confidence in him; who, as it
afterwards appeared from his testimony on the trial, carefully took
minutes--but, as it proved, very confused and incorrect ones--of all
that I said, hoping thus to secure something that might turn out to my
disadvantage. Another person, with whom I had a good deal of
conversation, and who was afterwards produced as a witness against me,
was William H. Craig, in my opinion a much more conscientious person
than Orme, who seemed to think that it was part of his duty, as a
police-officer, to testify to something, at all hazards, to help on a