Stories of tyranny and hardship which had driven men to piracy;- of
the incredible ignorance of masters and mates, and of horrid brutality
to the sick, dead, and dying; as well as of the secret knavery and
impositions practised upon seamen by connivance of the owners,
landlords, and officers; all these he had, and I could not but believe
them; for men who had known him for fifteen years had never taken
him even in an exaggeration, and, as I have said, his statements
were never disputed. I remember, among other things, his speaking of a
captain whom I had known by report, who never handed a thing to a
sailor, but put it on deck and kicked it to him; and of another, who
was of the best connections in Boston, who absolutely murdered a lad
from Boston that went out with him before the mast to Sumatra, by
keeping him hard at work while ill of the coast fever, and obliging
him to sleep in the close steerage. (The same captain has since died
of the same fever on the same coast.)
In fact, taking together all that I learned from him of
seamanship, of the history of sailors' lives, of practical wisdom, and
of human nature under new circumstances,- a great history from which
many are shut out,- I would not part with the hours I spent in the
watch with that man for any given hours of my life passed in study and
social intercourse.
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