t even read it, but I knew it was an
article of indenture; and I was told afterwards that it bound me for
years--for five long years--bound me not an apprentice but in reality a
slave. A slave for five years to this hideous brute, who might scold me
at will, cuff me at will, kick me at will, have me flogged or put in
irons whenever the fancy crossed his mind.

There was no retreating from these hard conditions. Filled with bright
visions of "life on the ocean wave," I had subscribed to them without
pause or thought. My name was down, and I was legally bound. So they
told me both captain and mate, and I believed it.

I could not escape, no matter how severe the treatment. Should I
attempt to run away from the ship, it would be desertion. I could be
brought back and punished for it. Even in a foreign port the chances of
desertion would be no better, but worse, since there the sailor finds it
more difficult to conceal himself. I had no hope then of escaping from
the cruel thrall in which I now found myself, but by putting an end to
my existence, either by jumping into the sea or hanging myself from the
yard-arm--a purpose which on more than one occasion I seriously
entertained; but from which I was diverted by the religious teachings of
my youth, now remembered in the midst of my misery.

It would be impossible for me to detail the number of cruelties and
indignities to which I was forced to submit. My existence was a series
of both.

Even my sleep, if sleep it could be called, I was not allowed to enjoy.
I possessed neither mattress nor hammock, for I had come aboard in my
common wearing clothes--in my school-jacket and cap--without either
money in my pocket or luggage in my hands. I had not even the usual
equipments of a runaway--the kerchief bundle and stick; I possessed
absolutely nothing--much less a mattress or hammock. Such things a
skipper does not find for his crew, and of course there was none for me.
I was not even allowed a "bunk" to sleep in, for the forecastle was
crowded and most of the bunks carried double. Those that were occupied
by only one chanced to have for their tenants the most morose and
ill-natured of the crew, and I was not permitted to share with them.
Even still more inhospitable were these fiends--for I cannot help
calling them so when I look back on what I suffered at their hands--I
was not even allowed to lie upon their great chests, a row of which
extended around the forecas