[13]. All over the world slavery, in all its forms, is repugnant and offensive to noble and generous feeling: and every where, in all ages and nations, oppression and this unholy traffic meet with a just rebuke. Man’s better feeling will revolt from cruelty and injustice until they are extinguished.
[14]. Of course he didn’t “like it.” It never did please the devil to be reproved of his evil deeds. It don’t please Southern soul-dealers and soul-drivers to be rebuked.
“Well, we made Port Antonio in three weeks, and stayed there thirteen days, and got a cargo, and then the captain says ‘boys, we shall have a rough passage home, if we go this fall, it’s so late, for we stayed a good while over the brine, and now who will hold up hands for staying till next spring?’
“So all on us up with both hands, and we hauled up anchor for Amsterdam—that’s in the Dutch country—and we made port in four weeks; and when we’d been there ’bout a fortnight, the captain got a letter from his uncle, James Bainbridge, who was in Bristol, and wanted him to come there and winter with him, for he was a sea captain, tu. So he leaves his ship in our hands, and makes the first mate captain, and we had to obey all his orders; and the captain starts and says, ‘farewell boys, keep ship safe till you see me, and I’ll write to ye often, and let you know how I cut my jib.’ And we see no more on him till airly next spring.
“Well, we had all the fun on shore and aboard we could ask for. White and black, we was all hail fellers, well met. We used to have a heap of visiters aboard, to hear ’bout America. We’d have an interpreter to tell our stories, and almost make some of them smoking, thick-skulled Dutchmen b’lieve that America flowed with milk and honey, and that pigs run ‘round the streets here with knives and forks in their backs, cryin’ out ‘eat me.’ I used to be a pretty slick darkey for fixin’ out a story, tu, and a big one ’bout America; and then some white man would set by my side and put the edge on, and ‘twould go without any greasin’; and the captain used to say, always, that if any deviltry was agoin’ on, Pete was always sure to have a finger in the pie. Well, we used to talk a considerable ’bout the wars they was a havin’ in the old countries, at that time, and they said they could take us up to a place, a few miles from there, where there had been a great battle, sometime afore; and for curiosity, we all went up to see it. Well, we goes, and finds thirty or forty acres, and there wasn’t a green thing on it, and ’twas covered with bones and skulls, and all kinds of balls and spikes, and bayonets, and whole heaps of bones, and I guess you never see so melancholy a place in all your life. Oh! it made me sick of war to see thousands and thousands of human bein’s a bleachin’ on the sand. And it seemed that the ground where that battle was fit, wouldn’t let any green thing grow there, and I don’t b’lieve any green thing grows there till this day. And there we was, a hearin’ every day ’bout Bonaparte, and his killin’ his thousands, and his takin’ this city and that city, and his conquerin’ this gineral and that gineral; but Lord Wellington give him a tough heat on the land, and Lord Nelson on the sea; but the world see terrible sorry times for a few years, while that Napoleon was a runnin’ his career.
“Well, captain got back to Amsterdam the first of April, and on the fourteenth we weighed anchor for New York. Well, come the sixth day I guess, at evenin’ arter I’d done all my work, and was a settin’ on the railin’ rother carelessly, the boom jibed and struck me on the top of my head, and the first I knew I was pitched head first into the brine. I fell into the wake and swum as fast as I could, and when I riz on the wave I could see the ship and her lights, and then when I went down in the troughs I lost sight of her, and I begun to feel kind’a streakish I tell ye. But pretty soon a rope struck me on the head, and I grabbed and hung on, and the hands aboard drew, and finally I got up pretty near, and the first I knew, and ’bout the last I knew, a wave come and plunged me head first right agin the starn, and that made all jar agin’ and I see mor’n fifty thousand stars; but I hung on, and they drawed me up aboard, and when I come fairly tu, the captain comes along and says:—
“‘Nig? where you ben?’
“‘Ben a fishin’, Sir.’
“‘Yis, and if you’d come across a good shark, you’d catched a nice fish wouldn’t you?’
“And when he spoke ’bout that, it scart me, for I begun to realize my danger, and I begun to be afeard when ’twas tu late, and I trembled jist like a leaf.