The right answer is by using his wit to charm people. The protagonist of this folktale, as told by Virginia Hamilton in The People Could Fly, is a young slave who is capable of avoiding the hardest tasks by making the plantation owners, even the cruelest ones, laugh, charming them with his inventiveness. The charm, however, does not last long, because as soon as his masters realize that he is being more clever, they sell him and he has to move to another plantation.
