silent; the lights of the vessels at anchor increased the darkness
around; and I was walking slowly along, wondering which of the
lamps hung on Captain Reddaway's vessel, when suddenly I found
myself surrounded by a group of men who seemed to have sprung from
nowhere. Before I knew what was happening, much less make any
movement of defence, I was being dragged by rough hands to the edge
of the quay. I shouted lustily for help, only to receive a crack on
the head from one of the men, while another clapped his hand across
my mouth. I wriggled desperately, tripped up one fellow, and used
my feet to some purpose on the shins of another; but there were so
many of them that I was soon overpowered, and was quite helpless in
their hands when they lugged me down the steps into a boat that lay
moored below.

Throwing me into the bottom they pulled off; in a few minutes they
came under the quarter of a large vessel in midstream; I was hauled
up the side, and, more or less dazed with my rough handling, heard
without understanding a loud voice giving orders. In two minutes I
was lying bound hand and foot in the fore part of the vessel, and
there I remained, exposed to the open sky, until morning dawned.

Chapter 13: Duguay-Trouin.

'Twas little sleep I got that night, my body smarting with the ill
usage I had suffered, and my mind in a ferment of rage and dismay.
This was the third and the worst mischance that had befallen me
since I left Shrewsbury, and no one would blame me overmuch,
perhaps, had I given way to utter despair. Old Woodrow had told me
stories about such tricks of kidnapping, but, just as when we hear
a parson denouncing sin we are apt to apply it to our neighbor and
not ourselves, so I had never dreamed that I myself might be the
victim of such an outrage. And remembering what Woodrow had said, I
broke out into a sweat of apprehension, for I knew that I could not
have been impressed as a mariner to serve aboard a privateer, as
was often done; only tried mariners were seized with that intent,
and certainly no one would wish to teach a raw landsman his duties
on a vessel engaged in such a perilous and desperate business.

I could only conclude, then, that the design in kidnapping me was
to ship me to the American or West Indian plantations, whither
every year hundreds of poor wretches were sent to a dismal slavery.
Woodrow had pointed out to me one day in the street a high
magistrate of the city, who had