f I
had arrived. And all this while the wretch knew that I was safely
clapped up in the yard of the Borough Clink. And the Foreign Person
being met at the Old Bailey by one of Hopwood's creatures, this Thing
takes him to walk on the leads of the Sessions House, praying him not to
enter the gaol, where many had lately been stricken with the Distemper,
and by and by up comes a Messenger all hot as it seemed with express
riding,--though his sweat and dust were all Forged,--and says that a
gang of Ruffians have broken up the Cage of Brentford, where, for
greater safety, the Boy Dangerous had been bestowed; that these Ruffians
were supposed to be the remnant of the Blacks of Charlwood Chase who had
escaped from capture; and that they had stolen away the Boy Dangerous,
and made clear off with him. And, indeed, it was a curious circumstance
that Brentford Cage was that day broken into (the Times were very
Lawless), and a Strange Boy taken out therefrom. But Hopwood had
artfully separated me from the Blacks who were in Newgate, and placed me
among a stranger mob of riffraff in the Borough Clink. The Newgate Gang
were in due time taken, not to Gravesend, but straight away from the
Pool to Richmond in Virginia; whereas I was conveyed to Gravesend and
Deal, and shipped off to Jamaica in _The Humane Hopwood_. And what do
you think was the object of this Humane Scoundrel in thus sequestrating
the King's Pardon and robbing me of my liberty, and perhaps of the
occasion of returning to the state of a Gentleman, in which I was Born?
'Twas simply to kidnap me, and make a wretched profit of twenty or
thirty pounds,--the Commander of his Ship going him half in the
adventure,--by selling me in the West Indies, where white boys not being
Transports were then much in demand, to be brought up as clerks and
cash-keepers to the Planters. Sure there was never such a Diabolical
Plot for so sorry an end; but a vast number of paltry conspiracies,
carried out with Infernal Cunning and Ingenuity, had made, in the course
of years, Sir Basil Hopwood rich and mighty, a Knight and Alderman,
Parliament man and ex-Lord Mayor. To carry out these designs was just
part of the ordinary calling of a Shipmaster in those days. 'Twas looked
upon as the simplest matter of business in the world. To kidnap a child
was such an everyday deed of devilry, that the slightest amount of pains
was deemed sufficing to conceal the abominable thing. And thus the
Foreign Person sa