your life?' Of course we were.
`It's nothing but carrying off a slip of a baby who can do little more
than talk, and just leaving him in the plantations.' We didn't ask
questions, but we went on board a little sloop he owned, and then we
waited, cruising about, till one evening he told us to pull on shore,
and there we found a nurse and child, and the woman gave us the child.
Away we went with it aboard the sloop, and made sail, and never dropped
anchor till we reached the port of Dublin. Then our captain sold the
sloop, and we all went aboard a ship and sailed for America. We didn't
reach it though. We had done a cursed deed, and God's curse was to
follow us. Our ship went down, and we were left floating on a raft; we
were well-nigh starved, when a ship fell in with us, and we were taken
on board. The captain was a kind-hearted man, and he said he would take
care of the little fellow; and as our captain--he that's gone--had got
the money for the deed he'd done, he didn't try to keep him; indeed, he
could not have kept him if he'd wished; and so the good captain drew up
a paper from what we'd told him, and he made us put our names to it, and
he went and locked it up, and after that he never talked about the
matter. We didn't know what he might do, so we ran from the ship at the
first port we came to. From that day to this I never set eyes on the
youngster, or heard of the good captain again. Well, one bad thing
leads to another. We all then went out to the West Indies, and we
shipped aboard some strange craft, and strange flags they sailed under.
It was difficult to know, when you came on deck, what was flying at the
peak. There were many things done which sickened me, and some of my
shipmates I saw hung up at Port Royal in a way I didn't like, and at
last I got away back to England. I then took a wife. Many years,
you'll understand, had passed by. I thought I was going to remain on
shore, and be quiet and honest. I'd one little chap born, and I began
to be fonder of him than I had been of any living creature before; but I
was short of money, and the old feeling came over me. When I wanted it
out in the West Indies then I took it. I now did a thing or two which
made me fly the country. From that day to this I have never set foot on
the shores of old England."

Morton thought that he might now venture to interrupt the old man. He
had been so anxiously waiting for the account he might give of the
pass