"Certainly, sir," said I; "I expect to go home in the ship."
"Then," said he, "you must get some one to go in your place on
board the Pilgrim."
I was so completely "taken aback" by this sudden intimation, that for
a moment I could make no reply. I knew that it would be hopeless to
attempt to prevail upon any of the ship's crew to take twelve months
more upon the California in the brig. I knew, too, that Captain
T - - - had received orders to bring me home in the Alert, and he
had told me, when I was at the hide-house, that I was to go home
in her; and even if this had not been so, it was cruel to give me
no notice of the step they were going to take, until a few hours
before the brig would sail. As soon as I had got my wits about me,
I put on a bold front, and told him plainly that I had a letter in
my chest informing me that he had been written to, by the owners
in Boston, to bring me home in the ship, and moreover, that he
had told me that I was to go in the ship.
To have this told him, and to be opposed in such a manner, was more
than my lord paramount had been used to.
He turned fiercely upon me, and tried to look me down, and face me
out of my statement; but finding that that wouldn't do, and that I
was entering upon my defence in such a way as would show to the other
two that he was in the wrong, - he changed his ground, and pointed
to the shipping papers of the Pilgrim, from which my name had never
been erased, and said that there was my name, - that I belonged to
her, - that he had an absolute discretionary power, - and, in short,
that I must be on board the Pilgrim by the next morning with my chest
and hammock, or have some one ready to go in my place, and that he
would not hear another word from me. No court or star chamber could
proceed more summarily with a poor devil, than this trio was about
to do with me; condemning me to a punishment worse than a Botany
Bay exile, and to a fate which would alter the whole current of
my future life; for two years more in California would have made
me a sailor for the rest of my days. I felt all this, and saw
the necessity of being determined. I repeated what I had said,
and insisted upon my right to return in the ship.
I "raised my arm, and tauld my crack,
Before them a'."
But it would have all availed me nothing, had I been "some poor
body," before this absolute, domineering tribunal.
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