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.
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