'They will tell you themselves presently. Madam, farewell.' With that Mr. Penne left me standing among this crowd of wretches, and, without waiting for my last words of gratitude, hurried away immediately. I saw him running across the plank to the quay. Then the boatswain blew a shrill whistle; the plank was shoved over; some ropes were cast loose, and the ship began slowly to move down the river with the tide, now beginning to run out, and a wind from the north-east. I looked about me. What were all these people? Why were they going to New England? Then, as the deck was now clearer, and the sailors, I suppose, at their stations, I ventured to walk towards the afterpart of the ship with the intention to ask the Captain for my cabin. As I did so, a man stood before me armed with a great cane, which he brandished, threatening, with a horrid oath, to lay it across my back if I ventured any further aft. 'Prisoners, for'ard!' he cried. 'Back you go, or--by the Lord'---- 'Prisoner?' I said. 'I am no prisoner. I am a passenger.' 'Passenger? Why, as for that, you are all passengers.' 'All? Who are these, then?' He informed me with plainness of speech who and what they were--convicts taken from the prisons, branded in the hand, and sentenced to transportation. 'But I am a passenger,' I repeated. 'Mr. Penne hath paid for my passage to New England. He hath paid the Captain'---- 'The ship is bound for Barbadoes, not New England. 'Tis my duty not to stir from this spot; but here's the Mate--tell him.' This was a young man, armed, like the Captain, with pistols and sword. 'Sir,' I said, 'I am a passenger brought on board by Mr. Penne, by whom my passage hath been paid to New England.' 'By Mr. George Penne, you say?' 'The same. He hath engaged a cabin for me, and hath purchased clothes--and'---- 'Is it possible,' said the Mate, 'that you do not know where you are, and whither you are going?' 'I am going, under the special care of the Captain, to the city of Boston, in New England, to my cousin, Mr. Eykin, a gentleman of credit and substance of that town.' He gazed at me with wonder. 'I will speak to the Captain,' he said, and left me standing there. Presently he returned. 'Come with me,' he said. 'You are Alice Eykin?' said the Captain, who had with him a paper from which he read. 'That is my name.' 'On a certain day in July, your father being a preacher in the army of the Duke of Monmouth, you walked with a procession of girls bearing flags which you presented to that rebel?' 'It is true, Sir.' 'You have been given by the King to some great Lord or other, I know not whom, and by him sold to the man Penne, who hath put you on board this ship, the "Jolly Thatcher," Port of London, to be conveyed, with a hundred prisoners, all rogues and thieves, to the Island of Barbadoes, where you will presently be sold as a servant for ten years; after which period, if you choose, you will be at liberty to return to England.'