e girl," he said. "I trust that we shall
welcome Stephen back again some day, though."

The Colonel tried to keep up Alice's spirits, and did not tell her of
the cruel execution which had taken place at Lyme a few days before,
when twelve gentlemen, all of education and high character, were put to
death, including poor Andrew Battiscombe.

The fate of those who were transported was still more cruel. They were
indiscriminately sold to West India merchants, planters, and others, who
shipped them off crowded together in small vessels to Jamaica. Stephen,
with upwards of eight hundred poor wretches, who had been condemned to
be sold as slaves by Jeffreys, arrived in London, having been carried
there in carts. Here they were awarded to the various noblemen,
courtiers, and others who had applied for them, who sold them for the
sum of ten pounds each. Few of them were of the rank of gentlemen--
nearly all Monmouth's officers having been executed, with the exception
of such as could pay heavy fines for their lives. Lord Grey, Ferguson,
Wade, and other leading men were allowed to live, the former paying
forty thousand pounds to the Lord Treasurer, and smaller sums to other
courtiers, for their lives. In London the slaves met many of the
followers of Argyll, who had, like them, been condemned to the West
Indies. Stephen, with about sixty others, was shipped on board a small
vessel, the _Surge_, Captain Hawkins, which, with seven other vessels
freighted in the same way, set sail together from the Thames. Never a
sadder fleet left the shores of England. The unhappy passengers knew
that they were never likely to see those shores again; they had been
torn from their families, their relatives and friends, and were going to
a pestiferous climate, to be employed in the open air under a burning
sun, like the negroes from Africa,--a climate which, under such
circumstances, is sure to prove fatal to Europeans. Stephen,
notwithstanding what he had gone through, was in tolerable health, and
he did his utmost to keep up his spirits. Scarcely was the fleet free
of the Channel than, a heavy gale springing up, the _Surge_ was
separated from her consorts, and proceeded on her voyage alone. The
passengers were secured together below like African slaves, on a deck
extending nearly fore and aft, with low benches on which they could sit,
a bar running behind it with iron rings to which they were chained.
Here they were compelled to slee