s, to labour that they may obtain
justice?"

Michael said much more on the same subject. Our captain listened, but
did not clearly understand him; nor did I at the time. He, however,
willingly granted him a passage, and treated him with the attention he
deserved at our hands during it.

Michael was a man far beyond his time. Not many blacks are like him;
but I have met some with comprehensive minds equal to those of any white
men. The vicious system to which the generality are subject, stunts or
destroys all mental development; but had they the advantages of the
whites, I believe as many buds in the one case as in the other would
bear rich fruit. Michael left us in Dublin, and it was not till long
afterwards that I heard his subsequent fate.

We had a prosperous passage to Dublin, and nothing occurred during it
worthy of being mentioned. The captain very slowly recovered his usual
spirits, but was completely himself again before we reached home.

The _Rainbow_ remained longer in dock than usual, and during the time I
had charge of her, Peter took the opportunity of visiting his friends,
who lived some miles from Liverpool.

My life was almost like that of a hermit's though surrounded by
multitudes. I scarcely spoke to anyone. I amused myself, however, in
my own way. I cut out all sorts of things in wood and bone, and
practised every variety of knot-and-splice. At last it occurred to me
that I would try to make a model of the brig. I bought at a timber-yard
a soft piece of white American pine, without a knot in it; and as I had
charge of the carpenter's tools, I got some of the chisels and gouges
sharpened up, and set to work. With rule and compass I drew two lines
for her keel on one side, and then pencilled out the shape of her deck
on the other. I first, by-the-by, made a scale of so many parts of an
inch to a foot, and measured every part of the brig I could reach.
Having got the shape of her deck exact, and her depth, I used to go
ahead and astern and look at her shape, and then come aboard again, and
chisel away at my model. I shaved off very little of the wood at a
time, and my eye being correct, I made one side exactly equal to the
other. Then fixing the wood in a vice, I scooped out the whole of the
interior with an even thickness on every side. At length the hull was
completed very much to my satisfaction. Then I got a piece of thin
plank for her deck, and built on her bulwarks, with the w