“But I’ll hurry on. We made the New York light after a long v’yge, and was kept on quarantine a good while, and on the mornin’ of the fourth of July, when the bells was a ringin’, and the boats was a flyin’ through the bay, and the guns from the Battery and Hoboken was a soundin’ along the bosom of the Hudson, all independence; and we landed and jumped ashore, and I think I never in all my life felt sich a kind of a gush of joy rush through all my soul, as I did when I heard them bells ring, and them guns roar; and this free nigger jumped ashore and celebrated independence as loud as any body.
“The captain paid us all off, and as I left him, I said I’d never go to sea agin, but that didn’t make it so; for I hadn’t been ashore a month, afore I was off agin with Captain George Thomson. Then I had five hundred dollars—three hundred Spanish mill dollars, and two hundred on the Manhattan Bank, and I had as good a wardrobe of clothes, both citizen’s and sailor’s as any other feller. Captain Thomson finds out I’d got this money, and says he, ‘you better not be a lugging your money round from port, let it out and git the interest on it;’ and so he showed me a rich man, Mr. Leacraft, that wanted it, and he gin me two notes of two hundred and fifty dollars, for one and two years, and I counted out my money; and we sailed for the West Indies. Well, we got there and took in a heavy cargo of groceries, and ’bout for home. But ’twas late in the season, and we had cold blusterin’ weather, and finally it grew so cold the rain froze on the riggin’; and the captain says, ‘we can’t make New York,’ and the mate says, ‘we can; and so we sailed on till we made the New York light, and we was all covered with ice; and the captain says, ‘boys we shall git stove to pieces, for we can’t manage our riggin’, and we must put back.’ So we did, into a warmer climate, and in two or three days the riggin’ grew limber, and the ice all dropped off, and it grew warmer and warmer, till at last we was in a region like our Ingen summer.
“Well, we’d been out a week, and Captain Woods, north from Bristol hailed us, and asked how the entrance was to New York. Our captain told him he couldn’t get in, but he swore he would, and on he sailed, and he’d been gone ten days, and he come back a cussin’ and swearin’, and had three of his men froze to death. We stay’d out four weeks longer, and was nearly out of provisions, and obliged to make port; and it moderated a leetle, and finally, arter some trouble, we reached home, and a gladder set of fellers you never did see.
“Well, we got paid off, and I jumped ashore, and says I, ‘I’ll stay here now; and here’s what’s off to Lady Rylander’s, and the rest of the season I’ll play the gentleman, for I’m sick of the brine, and I’ve got money enough to make a dash in the world.’ I’d no sooner got ashore, than a friend of mine comes up, and says, ‘Pete, you’ve lost all your money.’ ‘That can’t be possible,’ says I. ‘Yis, Pete, Leacraft is twenty thousand dollars worse than nothin’. Well, I was thunderstruck, and goes up to see him. Leacraft says, ‘to be sure I am Peter, all broke down; but if God spares my life, you shall have every dollar that’s your due.’
“But up to this hour I havn’t got a cent on it. Captain Thomson tried and tried to git it for me, but all to no purpose; and I grieved and passed sorrowful days and nights I tell ye; for I’d worked in heat and cold, and in all climates and countries for it, and thought now I should be able to begin life right, and ’twas all struck from me at a blow, and ’twas almost like takin’ life I tell ye.
“And now I ‘spose I took a wrong step.—One day I was in a grog shop with some of my companions, and I took a wicked oath, and flung down my money on the counter to pay for our wine, and says I, ‘hereafter, no man shall run away with the price of my labor, and if I have ten dollars, I’ll spend, here she goes,’ and down went my rhino, and in ten days I had spent all the pay of my last v’yge; and then I goes to Madam Rylander and hires out for sixteen dollars a month as her body sarvant. Not a finer lady ever set foot in Broadway; and she was as pleasant as the noonday sun, and if her sarvants did wrong, she’d call ’em up and discharge ’em, all pleasant, but firm; and she’d encourage me to be economical and good, and I liked her, but I hadn’t got my fill of the brine yit, and so I thought I’d out on the waves agin. You see I’d been a slave so long that I was jist like a bird let out of her cage, and I couldn’t be satisfied without I was a flyin’ all the time, and besides there was great talk about a war with John Bull, and I liked it all the better for that; and so I told Lady Rylander I must be off, and she offered me higher wages, but all that wouldn’t do; I was bound for the brine and must go.
“I hired out to Captain Williams agin, as steward, for thirty-one dollars a month; and we weighed anchor for St. Domingo; and we took a load of goods from there and started for the Rock of Gibralter once more. On our passage, we was overhauled by an equinoctial storm, and we had a distressed bad time, and it did seem that we must go to the bottom for days. We fell in with a fleet of thirty-seven sail from the West Indies, under the convoy of two English frigates, for London. You see these ships was merchantmen, and the English Admiral had sent out two frigates to protect ’em; for England and France was at war, and they’d seize each other’s commerce, and their governments had to protect ’em. When we got in hailin’ distance of the frigates, captain cries out, ‘how long do you think the storm will last?’ ‘Can’t say—all looks bad now; two of our vessels have gone to pieces, and every soul lost.’ And while we was talkin’ the seas broke over us like rollin’ mountains; we couldn’t lay into the wind at all, and we had to let her fly, and we went like a streak of greased lightnin’, and we soon lost sight on ’em; and I tell you ’twas a melancholy sight to see sich a fleet strugglin’ with sich a tempest; but we had all we could attend to at home, without borryin’ trouble from abroad. But we finally conquered the storm, and dropped anchor under the old fort agin. We lay in the basin two days, and then got liberty from the governor to go up the straits, and we calculated to run up to Egypt, and we cleared the straits and went into the Mediterranean; and then we was on what our college-larnt fellers calls classic ground.
“One day the captain calls me on deck and says, ‘Nig, do you see that city up the coast?’
“‘Yis? Sir.’
“‘Well, that’s the spot you sing so much about; now let’s have it; strike up, Nig.’