“Next day they begun to land their recruits, rank and file by companies, and as one company from the ship marched up the rock to the top of the fort, another company from the rock would march down aboard the ship, and in this way we see a heap on ’em landed and shipped. And there stood the Royal band all day in plain sight; and they was all colored folks, and they felt good tu, and every time they landed they’d fire a broadside from the fort, and shelter ’em with smoke; and every time a company of the fort’s soldiers come aboard the ship, they’d cover ’em with smoke; and put it all together, it was by all odds the handsomest sight I ever see in my travels.
“Well, two days arter this, ’bout nine o’clock in the morning, the cannon begun to blaze away from the old fort agin’, and we concluded we was agoin’ to have some more doin’s, and I up on deck and looked and looked, and bim’by I see a large frigate comin’ up leadin’ four merchantmen with flying colors, and she blazed back agin’, and when she got into the harbor, the seventy-fours in port opened their mouths agin’, and so we had it pretty lively.
“These merchantmen were loaded with provisions for the navy; oh! what a heap of folks there was in that Rock!! Our captain says ‘boys, they’ve bought our cargo, but I don’t s’pose ‘twould make a mouthful apiece for ’em.’ And what an expensive establishment that English army and navy is!
“We stayed there at the Rock a good while, and these merchant vessels went out under the protection of these navy ships, to victual the English fleet there; and we heard a good deal ’bout Napoleon and Lord Wellington. They was all the talk, and Wellington was all the toast; and their armies was a shakin’ the whole ‘arth, and ships and armies agoin’ and comin’ all the time; and there Lord Nelson, he was at the head of the English navy, and he was a great toast; and every day the papers would come and fetch stories of battles on land and at sea, till I was as sick on ’em as I could be. It seemed to be nothin’ but a story of blood all the time; and Europe and all the ocean was only jist a great buryin’ and murderin’ ground; and, for my part, I never thought much of these ’ere great wholesale murderers, as I calls Bonaparte, Wellington, and Lord Nelson, and sich like sort of fellers. Why, Domine, I should think, from all accounts I heard at the time, and arter it, that they must have killed all of five millions of folks, in all that fightin’ agin Napoleon. Oh! it’s a cruel piece of business to butcher folks so; and yit, nevertheless, notwithstanding, them same men was toasted, and be-toasted now all over the world, and it makes me sick of human natur’; and if I am a black man, I hate to see respectable people act so.
“Finally, arter a long stay, we hauled up anchor for Port Antonio. One day a man aloft cries out ‘ship ahoy.’ The captain looks through his big glass and says, ‘bear down on her helmsman;’ and when we got nigh ’nough, the captain hails her; ‘what ship?’
“‘Torpedo.’
“‘What captain?’
“‘Trumbull.’
“‘Where from?’
“‘African coast.’