w with dolorous Eyes the convoy of convicts take their
departure from Newgate to ship on board the Virginian vessel at St.
Katherine's Stairs, while poor little Jack Dangerous was being smuggled
away from Gravesend to Jamaica.

And to Jamaica I should have gone to be sold as a Slave, but for the
strange occurrence of the Captain taking a liking to me. He dared not
have kept me among the convicts, as the Sheriff at Port Royal would have
had a List in Duplicate of their names sent out by a fast-sailing King's
Ship; for the Government at Home had some faint Suspicion of the
prevailing custom of Kidnapping, and made some Feeble Attempts to stop
it. But he would have kept me on board as a ship-boy till the Auction of
the Transports was over, and then he would have coolly sold me, for as
much as I would fetch, to some Merchant of Kingston or Port Royal, who
was used to deal in flesh and blood, and who, in due course, would have
transferred me, at a profit, to some up-country planter.

"But that shall never be, Jack my hearty," Captain Handsell exclaimed,
when, after many more pipes of Tobacco and rummers of Punch, he had
explained these wonderful things to me. "I shall lose my half share in
the venture, and shall have to tell a rare lie to yonder old
Skin-a-flea-for-the-hide-and-fat in London; but what o' that? I tell
thee I won't have the sale of thy flesh and blood on my conscience. No
slave shall you be, forsooth. I have an aunt at Kingston, as honest a
woman as ever broke biscuit, although she has got a dash of the
tar-brush on her mug, and she shall take charge of thee; and if thou
were a gentleman born, I'll be hanged if thou sha'n't be a gentleman
bred."

It would have been more fitted to the performance of this Honourable
and Upright Action towards one that he had no motive at all in serving
(in Fact, his Interest lay right the other way), that I should be able
to chronicle a sensible Reformation in my Commander's bearing and
conduct towards others; but, alas, that I am unable to do; the truth
being that he continued, unto the very end of our voyage, to be towards
the Hands the same brutal and merciless Tyrant that he had once, in the
days of his Rope's-End Discipline, been towards me. 'Twas Punch and
Cobbing, Tobacco and Ugly Words, from the rising of the Sun until the
setting of the same. And for this reason it is (having seen so many
Contradictions in Human character) that I am never surprised to hear of
a Good