“I don’t think you bad, Ben; quite the contrary. It is for that reason I spoke as I did. I think you very different from the others. I—”
“Maybe you’re right, boy; maybe not. I warn’t always bad. I was once like yourself and didn’t care for such as these; but there are tyrants in the world as makes men bad, and they’ve made me.”
Here the sailor paused and uttered a sigh, while an expression of extreme bitterness passed over his face; some harsh recollection was stirring within him.
“How, Ben?” I ventured to ask. “I cannot believe it. They may have made you unhappy, but not wicked. I know you are not.”
“You are kind, little Will, to say this to me.—You are very kind, my boy; you make me feel as I once did feel, and I’ll tell you all. Listen! and I’ll tell you all about it.”
There was a tear in the sailor’s eye, the first he had shed for many a long year. Upon his weather-bronzed face I observed a mingled expression of tenderness and sadness.
I placed myself to listen attentively.
“It’s a short story,” he continued, “and won’t take many words. I warn’t always what I am now. No, I was a man-o’-war’s-man for many a year, and, though I say it myself, there warn’t many in the service as knew their duty or did it better. But all that went for nothing. It was at Spithead—we were lying there with the fleet, and I chanced to run foul o’ the master’s-mate o’ our ship. It was all about a bit o’ lass that we met ashore, who was my sweetheart. He was a-makin’ too free with her, and my blood got up. I couldn’t help it, and I threatened him—only threatened him. There’s what I got for it. Look there, little Will!”
As the sailor finished speaking, he pulled off his jacket, and raised his shirt over his shoulder. I perceived across his back, and up and down, and in every direction, a complete network of long scars—the scars of old weals—which the “cats” had made upon his flesh.
“Now, my lad, you know why I’m driven to a ship like this. In course I desarted the navy, and afterwards tried it in the merchant-sarvice, but go where I would, I carried the Cain-mark along with me, and somehow or other it always came out, and I couldn’t stand it. Here I’m not the odd sheep in the flock. Among the fellows below there, there’s many a back as well striped as mine.”