ore; really Humane and
Charitable Gentlemen, not such False Rogues and Kidnappers as your
Hopwoods, are bestirring themselves in Parliament and elsewhere to
better the Dolorous Condition of the Negro; and although it may be a
Decree of Providence that the children of Ham are to continue always
slaves and servants to their white brethren, I see every day that men's
hearts are being more and more benevolently turned towards them, and
that laws, ere long, will be made to forbid their being treated worse
than the beasts that perish.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] Captain Dangerous! Captain Dangerous!--ED.

[B] That which I have made Captain Dangerous relate in fiction will be
found narrated, act for act, and nearly word for word, in the very
unromantic evidence given before the first parliamentary committee on
slavery and the slave-trade moved for by Mr. Clarkson.--ED.

CHAPTER THE SECOND.

OF OTHER MY ADVENTURES UNTIL MY COMING TO BE A
MAN.

THUS in a sultry colony, among Black Negroes and their cruel
Task-masters, and I the clerk to a Mulotter Washerwoman, did I come to
be full sixteen years of age, and a stalwart Lad of my inches. But for
that Fate, which from the first irrevocably decreed that mine was to be
a Roving Life, almost to its end, I might have continued in the employ
of Maum Buckey until Manhood overtook me. The Dame was not unfavourable
towards me; and, without vanity, may I say that, had I waited my
occasion, 'tis not unlikely but that I might have married her, and
become the possessor of her plump Money-Bags, full of Moidores, pilar
Dollars, and pieces of Eight. Happily I was not permitted so to
disparage my lineage, and put a coffee-coloured blot on my escutcheon.
No, my Lilias is no Mulotter Quartercaste. 'Twas my roving propensity
that made me set but little store by the sugar-eyes and Molasses-speech
which Madam Soapsuds was not loth to bestow on me, a tall and likely
Lad. I valued her sweetness just as though it had been so much
cane-trash. With much impatience I had waited for the coming back of my
friendly skipper, that he might advise me as to my future career. But,
as I have already warned the Reader, it was fated that I was to see that
kindly shipmaster no more. Once, indeed, the old ship came into Port
Royal, and right eagerly did I take boat and board her. But her name had
been changed from _The Humane Hopwood_ to _The Protestant Pledge_. She
was in the Guinea trade now, a