any clearer than this: it was a hatred of all men that took possession
of me--a fierce desire to make mankind pay for the wrongs I had
suffered. I gave myself up to the drink again, but not as I did when
they named me a drunkard. This time I was the master of it; I used it
for my purpose; I fed my thoughts of vengeance on it; and, while my
partner was sending me more than a thousand pounds a week from
Michigan, I remained in New York with the double purpose in my head--to
get my boy back to me, and to crush the life out of the man who had
left my wife to die.

"All the news I could get at that time was this: the boy had left
Charleston, ostensibly for the Bahamas, three months before I reached
New York City; but nothing more had been heard of him or the ship. I
put the best detectives in the city on Leveston's trail, raining the
money into their pockets to keep them to the work; and they got it out
of some of Leveston's seamen in Savannah that he had gone a long cruise
in one of his barques to Rio, and even farther south. This news was
like red-hot iron to my head. I knew that I couldn't touch the man by
law, except for the robbery of the bit of money, and _that_ I didn't
care a brass button about. What I meant to have was his life, and I
swore that no man should take it but me. Then I went into every low
haunt in New York. I searched the drinking dens of the Bowery; I made
friends with all the thieves, picked up the loafers, and the starving.
The parson who's gone I found running a gambling hell in New Jersey;
the man 'Four-Eyes' I took from a crimp at Boston; John we got later on
at Rio, where we bought him from the police. I had as fine a crew of
scoundrels in a month as ever cursed in a fo'castle; and I shipped them
all on the screw-steamer, _Rossa_, which I bought for six thousand
pounds from the Rossa Company. She was just on six hundred tons, an
iron boat built for the meat trade; but we knocked her about quick
enough, setting three machine-guns for'ard, and fifty Winchester rifles
among her stores. We put out from Sandy Hook, it must be nearly six
years ago; and we steamed straight ahead for Rio, where we got tidings
of Leveston's barque. She had sailed for Buenos Ayres, but they looked
for her return within the month, and we left again next day, cruising
near shore as far as Desterro, where luck was with us.

"I remember that morning as if it was yesterday. We had struck
eight-bells, and the men were going do