When I awoke it was broad day.  The clouds had vanished, and the hot sunshine fell through the trees upon my face.  I started up, realizing my situation, and darted onward.  My object was to reach the great road by which we had travelled when we came out from Virginia.  I had, however, very little hope of escape.  I knew that a hot pursuit would be made after me, and what I most dreaded was, that the overseer would procure Crop’s bloodhounds to follow my track.  If only the hounds of our plantation were sent after me, I had hopes of being able to make friends of them, as they were always good-natured and obedient to me.  I travelled until, as near as I could judge, about ten o’clock, when a distant sound startled me.  I stopped and listened.  It was the deep bay of the bloodhound, apparently at a great distance.  I hurried on until I came to a creek about fifteen yards wide, skirted by an almost impenetrable growth of reeds and cane.  Plunging into it, I swam across and ran down by the side of it a short distance, and, in order to baffle the dogs, swam back to the other side again.  I stopped in the reed-bed and listened.  The dogs seemed close at hand, and by the loud barking I felt persuaded that Crop’s hounds were with them.  I thought of the fate of Little John, who had been torn in pieces by the hounds, and of the scarcely less dreadful condition of those who had escaped the dogs only to fall into the hands of the overseer.  The yell of the dogs grew louder.  Escape seemed impossible.  I ran down to the creek with a determination to drown myself.  I plunged into the water and went down to the bottom; but the dreadful strangling sensation compelled me to struggle up to the surface.  Again I heard the yell of the bloodhounds; and again desperately plunged down into the water.  As I went down I opened my mouth, and, choked and gasping, I found myself once more struggling upward.  As I rose to the top of the water and caught a glimpse of the sunshine and the trees, the love of life revived in me.  I swam to the other side of the creek, and forced my way through the reeds to a large tree, and stood under one of its lowest limbs, ready in case of necessity, to spring up into it.  Here panting and exhausted, I stood waiting for the dogs.  The woods seemed full of them.  I heard a bell tinkle, and, a moment after, our old hound Venus came bounding through the cane, dripping wet from the creek.  As the old hound came towards me, I called to her as I used to do when out hunting with her.  She stopped suddenly, looked up at me, and then came wagging her tail and fawning around me.  A moment after the other dog came up hot in the chase, and with their noses to the ground.  I called to them, but they did not look up, but came yelling on.  I was just about to spring into the tree to avoid them when Venus the old hound met them, and stopped them.  They then all came fawning and playing and jumping about me.  The very creatures whom a moment before I had feared would tear me limb from limb, were now