Fear was therefore a common emotion for many of the enslaved; fear for their own life and well-being but also fear concerning the lives and well-being of friends and familiy. Equiano’s Narrative, expresses the fears of a child in unfamiliar, as well as terrifying, circumstances, and the emotions he describes would have been common to the millions of Africans snatched from their families and transported hundreds and ultimately thousands of miles from their homelands. Both Equiano and Mary Prince describe other fears too, those occasioned by being separated from loved ones, for example, and of the possible destitution facing those who liberated themselves from slavery. They also describe the powerlessness felt by those Africans who were nominally free but whose rights were still curtailed and who could even be re-enslaved. Equiano for example, recounts his unsuccessful attempt to save his friend, John Annis, a former slave, who was re-kidnapped by his previous owner on board ship in London and taken back to a life of slavery in the Caribbean. In Britain, rewards were routinely offered by owners for the safe return owners of those Africans who liberated themselves from slavery by running away so that even freedom could be a precarious existence. At the same time, both Equiano and Mary Prince demonstrate that the enslaved overcame their fears and engaged in a range of activities to try to better their circumstances, or consciously made the decision that they preferred death to bondage. Equiano, for instance, engaged in trade, the strategy which eventually allowed him to buy his freedom. Mary Prince defied her owners by getting married to a free man and eventually was courageous enough to leave them when they brought her with them to London. Others countered their fears through strong religious belief.