Fiction > Book editions > London, 1886 - Kidnapped

60                                      KIDNAPPED.
from them at the Ferry pier, as though they had been
unclean beasts. No class of man is altogether bad; but
each has its own faults and virtues; and these shipmates
of mine were no exception to the rule. Bough they
were, sure enough; and bad, I suppose; but they had
many virtues. They were kind when it occurred to
them, simple even beyond the simplicity of a country
lad like me, and had some glimmerings of honesty.
There was one man of maybe forty, that would sit on
my berthside for hours, and tell me of his wife and
child. He was a fisher that had lost his boat, and thus
been driven to the deep-sea voyaging. Well, it is years
ago now; but I have never forgotten him. His wife
(who was " young by him," as he often told me) waited
in vain to see her man return; he would never again
make the fire for her in the morning, nor yet keep the
bairn when she was sick. Indeed, many of these poor
fellows (as the event proved) were upon their last cruise;
the deep seas and cannibal fish received them; and it is
a thankless business to speak ill of the dead.
Among other good deeds that they did, they returned
my money, which had been shared among them; and
though it was about a third short, I was very glad to
get it, and hoped great good from it in the land I was
going to. The ship was bound for the Carolinas; and
you must not suppose that I was going to that place
merely as an exile. The trade was even then much de-
pressed; since that, and with the rebellion of the colonies
and the formation of the United States, it has, of course,