At length he again reached his mother’s house at Roxbury, after an absence of about three years. His mother, at first, did not recognize him. She entertained him as a stranger, until he made himself known, and then her joy was great, for she had long mourned him as lost. CHAPTER XXVIII THE CASE OF CHRISTOPHER HAWKINS Christopher Hawkins was born in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1764. When he was in his thirteenth year he sailed on board an American privateer as a cabin boy. The privateer was a schooner, called the Eagle, commanded by Captain Potter. Taken prisoner by the British, Hawkins was sent on board the Asia, an old transport ship, but was soon taken off this vessel, then used for the confinement of American prisoners, and sent on board a frigate, the Maidstone, to serve as a waiter to the British officers on board. He remained on board the Maidstone a year. At the end of that time he was allowed a good deal of liberty. He and another boy were sent on shore to New York with a message, managed to elude the sentinels, and escaped first to Long Island, and afterwards returned home to Providence. About 1781 he again went on board a privateer under Captain Whipple, was again captured, and this time he was sent to the Jersey. He describes the condition of the prisoners on their way in a transport to this fearful prison ship. They were so crowded together that they could scarcely move, yet they all joined in singing a patriotic song every stanza of which ended with the words: “For America and all her sons forever will shine!” They were on board this transport three or four days unable to sit or lie down for want of room. When at last they reached the Jersey they found 800 prisoners on board. Many of these poor wretches would become sick in the night and die before day. Hawkins was obliged to lie down to rest only twenty feet from the gangway, and in the path of the prisoners who would run over him to get on the upper deck. He describes the condition of these men as appalling. “Near us,” he writes, “was a guard ship and hospital ship, and along the shore a line of sentinels at regular intervals.” Yet he determined to escape. Many did so; and many were murdered in the attempt. A mess of six had just met a dreadful fate. One of them became terrified and exclaimed as soon as he touched the water, “O Lord, I shall be drowned!” The guard turned out, and murdered five of the poor wretches. The sixth managed to hide, and held on by the flukes of the anchor with nothing but his nose above water. Early in the morning he climbed up the anchor over the bow of the ship to the forecastle, and fled below. A boy named Waterman and Hawkins determined to drop through a port-hole, and endeavor to reach Long Island by swimming. He thus describes the adventure: