Liverpool at that time fitted out a number of slavers—the slave-trade, which was afterwards prohibited, being then lawful, and having many respectable people engaged in it. Hearing from a shipmate that the Royal Oak, a ship of eighteen guns, with a letter-of-marque commission, was fitting out for the coast of Africa, and was in want of hands, I went and entered on board her. She carried, all told, eighty hands. I found two or three old shipmates aboard her, but no one whom I could call a friend.
We reached the coast without any adventure, and in those days the slaves who had come down from the interior being collected in depôts, ready for shipment, we soon got our cargo on board. For several years I remained in this trade, sometimes carrying our cargo of hapless beings to Rio de Janeiro or other parts of the Brazils, and sometimes to the West Indies. It never occurred to me that there was anything wrong in the system. All the lessons I had received in the West Indies, in my early days, were thrown away. The pay was good; the work not hard, though pretty frequently we lost our people by fever; and so I thought no more about the matter.
At length I found my way back to Liverpool, just as the battle of Waterloo and Napoleon’s abdication brought the blessings of peace to Europe.
Chapter Sixteen.
Whaling in the South-Sea.
Every sea-port in England was thronged with seamen whom the cessation of war had cast on shore without employment, when as I was strolling along the quays of Liverpool with my hands in my pockets, in rather a disconsolate mood, wondering in what direction my wayward fate would carry me, I ran bolt up against a post near which a gentleman was standing, and somehow or other managed to tumble over him.
“Beg pardon, sir,” said I, looking up in his face; “I did not see you.”
“No harm done, my man; but stop,” said he, as I was moving on; “I think I remember that voice and face. Jack Williams, I am certain?”