Fiction > Book editions > London, 1886 - Kidnapped

62                                       KIDNAPPED.
tices were continually lashed and clapped into foul
prisons. In a town, he thought every second person a
decoy, and every third house a place in which seamen
would be drugged and murdered. To be sure, I could
tell him how kindly I had myself been used upon that
dry land he was so much afraid of, and how well fed and
carefully taught both by my friends and my parents : and
if he had been recently hurt, he would weep bitterly and
swear to run away; but if he was in his usual crackbrain
humour or (still more) if he had had a glass of spirits in
the round-house, he would deride the notion.
It was Mr. Riach (Heaven forgive him!) who gave
the boy drink; and it was, doubtless, kindly meant; but
besides that it was ruin to his health, it was the
pitifullest thing in life to see this unhappy, unfriended
creature staggering, and dancing, and talking he knew
not what. Some of the men laughed, but not all; others
would grow as black as thunder (thinking, perhaps, of
their own childhood or their own children) and bid him
stop that nonsense, and think what he was doing. As
for me, I felt ashamed to look at him, and the poor chlid
still comes about me in my dreams.
All this time, you should know, the   Covenant was
meeting continual head - winds and tumbling up and
down against head-seas, so that the scuttle was almost
constantly shut, and the forecastle lighted only by a
swinging lantern on a beam. There was constant labour
for all hands; the sails had to be made and shortened
every hour; the strain told on the men's temper; there