Old Woodrow had told me
stories about such tricks of kidnapping, but, just as when we hear
a parson denouncing sin we are apt to apply it to our neighbor and
not ourselves, so I had never dreamed that I myself might be the
victim of such an outrage. And remembering what Woodrow had said, I
broke out into a sweat of apprehension, for I knew that I could not
have been impressed as a mariner to serve aboard a privateer, as
was often done; only tried mariners were seized with that intent,
and certainly no one would wish to teach a raw landsman his duties
on a vessel engaged in such a perilous and desperate business.
I could only conclude, then, that the design in kidnapping me was
to ship me to the American or West Indian plantations, whither
every year hundreds of poor wretches were sent to a dismal slavery.
Woodrow had pointed out to me one day in the street a high
magistrate of the city, who had made great wealth in the sugar
trade, and did not disdain to add to it by selling flesh and blood.
My imagination racked with this fear, I lay sleepless, save for
brief intervals of restless dozing. Soon after dawn I heard
movements about the ship, and by and by some of the sailors came
and looked at me, making all manner of jests in language fouler
than I had ever heard. The features of one of them seemed familiar
to me, though at first I could not recall place or time when I had
seen him before. But after a while, as I watched him, I recognized
him in spite of some change in his garb: it was the lodger whom
Mistress Perry had wished to place in my room.
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