rd that bore his
name taken away; so it seemed that he had left the place or else was
dead. Thus we reached the quays at last, and though I knew that I was
leaving Europe and leaving all hope behind, yet 'twas a delight to smell
the sea again, and fill my nostrils with the keen salt air.

CHAPTER 18

IN THE BAY

Let broad leagues dissever
Him from yonder foam,
O God! to think man ever
Comes too near his home--_Hood_

The ship that was to carry us swung at the buoy a quarter of a mile
offshore, and there were row-boats waiting to take us to her. She was a
brig of some 120 tons burthen, and as we came under the stern I saw her
name was the _Aurungzebe_.

'Twas with regret unspeakable I took my last look at Europe; and casting
my eyes round saw the smoke of the town dark against the darkening sky;
yet knew that neither smoke nor sky was half as black as was the prospect
of my life.

They sent us down to the orlop or lowest deck, a foul place where was no
air nor light, and shut the hatches down on top of us. There were thirty
of us all told, hustled and driven like pigs into this deck, which was to
be our pigsty for six months or more. Here was just light enough, when
they had the hatches off, to show us what sort of place it was, namely,
as foul as it smelt, with never table, seat, nor anything, but roughest
planks and balks; and there they changed our bonds, taking away the bar,
and putting a tight bracelet round one wrist, with a padlocked chain
running through a loop on it. Thus we were still ironed, six together,
but had a greater freedom and more scope to move. And more than this, the
man who shifted the chains, whether through caprice, or perhaps because
he really wished to show us what pity he might, padlocked me on to the
same chain with Elzevir, saying, we were English swine and might sink or
swim together. Then the hatches were put on, and there they left us in
the dark to think or sleep or curse the time away. The weariness of
Ymeguen was bad indeed, and yet it was a heaven to this night of hell,
where all we had to look for was twice a day the moving of the hatches,
and half an hour's glimmer of a ship's lantern, while they served us out
the broken victuals that the Dutch crew would not eat.

I shall say nothing of the foulness of this place, because 'twas too
foul to be written on paper; and if 'twas foul at starting, 'twas ten
times worse when we reached open sea, for of all the prisone