Leaving the path, he plunged deeper into the woods, ran for some distance along the edge of a swamp, and leaping in up to his knees in mud and water, doubled on his track, then turned again, and penetrating farther and farther into the depths of the morass, finally climbed a tree, groaning with the pain the effort cost him, and concealed himself among the branches.
His pursuers came up to the spot where he had made his plunge into the water; here they paused, evidently at fault.

He could hear the sound of their footsteps and voices, and judge of their movements by the gleam of the torches many of them carried.
Some now took one direction, some another, and he perceived with joy that his stratagem had been at least partially successful.

One party, however, soon followed him into the swamp.

He could hear Spriggs urging them on and anathematizing him as "a scoundrel, robber, burglar, murderer, who ought to be swung up to the nearest tree." Every thicket was undergoing a thorough search, heads were thrown back and torches held high that eager blacks eyes might scan the tree-tops, and Jackson began to grow sick with the almost certainty of being taken, as several stout negroes drew nearer and nearer his chosen hiding-place.
He uttered a low, breathed imprecation upon his useless right arm, and the man whose sure aim had made it so.

"But for you," he muttered, grinding his teeth, "I'd sell my life dear." But the rain, which had slackened for a time, again poured down in torrents, the torches sputtered and went out, and the pursuers turned back in haste to gain the firmer soil, where less danger was to be apprehended from alligators, panthers, and poisonous reptiles.
The search was kept up for some time longer, with no light but an occasional flash from the skies; but finally abandoned, as we have seen.
Jackson passed several hours most uncomfortably and painfully on his elevated perch, quaking with fear of both man and reptile, not daring to come down or to sleep in his precarious position, or able to do so for the pain of his wound, and growing hour by hour weaker from the bleeding which it was impossible to check entirely.
Then his mind was in a state of great disturbance, His wound must be dressed, and that speedily; yet how could it be accomplished without imperiling life and liberty?
Perhaps he had now two new murders on his hands; he did not know, but he had at least attempted to take life, and the story would fly on the wings of the wind; such stories always did.
He had been lurking about the neighborhood for days, and had learned that Dr.Balis, an excellent physician and surgeon, lived on a plantation, some two or three miles eastward from Viamede.