ance, which is
very prevalent in this country, and when you find it convenient, to
pay Government the money that was allowed you for subsistence while in
prison.'

"The following day we all procured employment in launching a vessel of
three hundred tons burden, and my men showed themselves so active
that the owner said he would rather have us than thirty of his own
countrymen; which saying pleased the Governor, who was there with almost
the whole of the inhabitants and a whole band of music, this vessel
having been nearly three years on the stocks. After she was launched,
the seamen amongst us helped to fit her out, being paid fifteen dollars
a month, with provisions on board. As for myself, I speedily obtained
employment in the shipbuilder's yard, and subsisted by honest industry,
almost forgetting, in the unwonted pleasures of freedom, the sad reverse
of fortune which had befallen me. To think that I, who had mingled among
gentlemen and scholars, should be thankful to labour in a shipwright's
yard by day, and sleep on a bundle of hides by night! But this is
personal matter, and need not be obtruded.

"In the same yard with me worked the soldier who had betrayed us, and I
could not but regard it as a special judgment of Heaven when he one
day fell from a great height and was taken up for dead, dying in much
torment in a few hours. The days thus passed on in comparative happiness
until the 20th of May, 1836, when the old Governor took his departure,
regretted by all the inhabitants of Valdivia, and the Achilles, a
one-and-twenty-gun brig of war, arrived with the new Governor. One of
the first acts of this gentleman was to sell our boat, which was moored
at the back of Government-house. This proceeding looked to my mind
indicative of ill-will; and, fearful lest the Governor should deliver us
again into bondage, I resolved to make my escape from the place. Having
communicated my plans to Barker, Lesly, Riley, Shiers, and Russen, I
offered the Governor to get built for him a handsome whale-boat, making
the iron work myself. The Governor consented, and in a little more
than a fortnight we had completed a four-oared whale-boat, capable of
weathering either sea or storm. We fitted her with sails and provisions
in the Governor's name, and on the 4th of July, being a Saturday night,
we took our departure from Valdivia, dropping down the river shortly
after sunset. Whether the Governor, disgusted at the trick we had
played him