“I had heard enough about men-of-war to make me expect pretty rough treatment. Things, I must own, were not so bad as I thought. I had no choice but to enter as one of her crew. Sambo did the same, and was rated as cook’s mate. He seemed much happier than before, and told me it was the luckiest thing that ever happened to him in his life. When we got out to Bombay, the first place we touched at, I asked him about running from the ship. ‘Don’t be a fool, Boas,’ he answered; ‘you stay where you are; you only fall from de frying-pan into de fire if you attempt to run.’
“I still, however, thought that I would try it some day, but so sharp a look-out was kept whenever we were in port, that I gave it up as hopeless.
“Four years passed away. We had a few brushes with the Chinese and some boat service in looking after pirates, and at length the frigate was ordered home. I had had a taste of the lash more than once for getting drunk, and had been put in irons for insubordination, and had no mind to join another man-of-war if I could help it.
“As soon as the frigate was paid off, after I had had a spree on shore, I determined to make my way to Liverpool and ship on board another trader. I tried to persuade Sambo to accompany me. ‘No, no, Boas, I know when I well off; I serve my time, den bear up for Greenwich, get pension and live like a gentlemen to the end of my days. You knock about de world, get kicked and cuffed and die like a dog.’
“I felt very angry and parted from him, though I could not help thinking that perhaps he was right.
“Well, after that I served on board several merchantmen, now sailing to the West Indies, now to the East, once in a fruit vessel to the Azores, and two or three times up the Mediterranean. I was wrecked more than once, and another time the ship I was on board was burnt, and I and three or four others of the crew escaped in one of the boats. I could not help thinking sometimes of what Sambo had said to me, but it was too late now, and as I had not saved a farthing and had no pension to fall back on, I was obliged to continue at sea.
“I had found my way once more back to Liverpool, when the crimps, who had got hold of me, shipped me on board a vessel while I was drunk, and I was hoisted up the side not knowing where I was nor where I was going to till next day, when the pilot having left us, we were standing down the Irish Channel. I then found that I was on board a large armed brig, the ‘Seagull,’ bound out round Cape Horn to trade along the coast of Chili and Peru.
“I had sailed with a good many hard-fisted skippers and rough shipmates, but the captain and mates and crew of the ‘Seagull’ beat them all. The mates had ropes’ ends in their hands from morning to night, and to have marling-spikes hove at our heads was nothing uncommon. I had been at sea, however, too long not to know how to hold my own. My fists were always ready, and I kept my sheath-knife pretty sharp as a sign to the others that I would have no tricks played with me. But the boys among us did have a cruel life of it; one of them jumped overboard and drowned himself, and so would another, but the captain had him triced up and gave him two dozen, and swore he should have three the next time he made the attempt.
“We had a long passage. I have a notion that the skipper was no great navigator. I have seen tall large-whiskered fellows like him who could talk big on shore prove but sorry seamen after all.