iberty; though I might have remembered,
had I thought more about it, how bitterly they would be disappointed.
In too many instances, husbands and wives then parted, never met again.
Fathers, also, were torn from their children, leaving them desolate
indeed; young sons were carried off from their parents. We had not time
to stop to listen to any remonstrances. Men must be had at every cost.
The only question asked was, "Have you a protection?" If not, seamen,
and often landsmen, if they were stout fellows, were bound hand and foot
and carried off to the boats. I would have given much to have allowed
one young man, especially, to escape. He had been aroused by the noise
in the street, and was sitting up dressed when we entered his house,
holding his wife in his arms. She was a fragile, delicate-looking girl,
soon about to become a mother. I felt almost sure when I saw the couple
that the shock would kill her.

"You will not take him, sir?" she said, calmly appealing to me as I
entered the room in which my men had just seized him, though even they
were inclined to treat him with some delicacy. "He has been an officer,
sir. You will not carry him off and make a common seaman of him? Oh,
sir, he is my husband, he does not wish to leave me. Let him, let him
remain!"

This simple and artless appeal affected me much.

"He surely has some protection," said I. "Pray, let me see it."

"Oh, you relent, you relent!" she shrieked out joyfully.

"I have no protection that I am aware of, except the right of being
free," answered the young man mournfully.

If I let this poor fellow off, so I must many others, and, besides, my
duty is to take him; orders must be obeyed, I reflected.

"It cannot be helped," said I gruffly. "You must come along with us.
The captain may let you off when he hears your story."

"I'll go quietly, but do not bind me, for mercy's sake," he answered
calmly.

I walked out of the room. There was the sound of something falling on
the floor. The poor young wife had fainted. Thus the husband had to
leave her, unconscious of her bereavement, he was conveyed on board the
Charon. Before we left the port, a letter was brought him from the
shore. He was a widower. While he remained in the ship he was to all
appearance a steady, obedient man, but I suspect that he wreaked a
bitter vengeance ere long for the cruel wrong he felt that he had
suffered.

The result of this hot-press was four hundre