So it was certain that I was going to a place where I must look for very little mercy, unless I could buy it; and where the white servant was regarded as worth so many years of work; not so much as a negro, because he doth sooner sink under the hardships of his lot, while the negro continues frolick and lusty, and marries and has children, even though he has to toil all day in the sun, and is flogged continually to make him work with the greater heart. Among the women on board was a young woman, not more than eighteen or thereabout, who was called Deb. She had no other name. Her birthplace she knew not; but she had run about the country with some tinkers, whose language she said is called 'Shelta' by those people. This she could still talk. They sold her in Bristol; after which her history is one which, I learn, is common in towns. When the Captain bade her come to the cabin, and ordered her to obey me in whatsoever I commanded, she looked stupidly at him, shrinking from him if he moved, as if she was accustomed (which was indeed the case) to be beaten at every word. I made her first clean herself and wash her clothes. This done, she slept in my cabin, and, as the Captain promised, became my servant. At first she was not only afraid of ill-treatment, but she would wilfully lie; she purloined things and hid them; she told me so many tales of her past life, all of them different, that I could believe none. Yet when she presently found out that I was not going to beat her, and that the Captain did never offer to cuff or kick her (which the poor wretch expected), she left off telling falsehoods and became as handy, obliging, and useful a creature as one could desire. She was a great, strapping girl, black-eyed and with black hair, as strong as any man, and a good-looking creature as well, to those who like great women. This Deb, when, I say, she ceased to be afraid of me, began to tell me her true history, which was, I suppose, only remarkable because she seemed not to know that it was shameful and wicked. She lived, as the people among whom she had been brought up lived, without the least sense or knowledge of God; indeed, no heathen savage could be more without religion than the tinkers and gipsies on the road. They have no knowledge at all; they are born; they live; they die; they are buried in a hedgeside, and are forgotten. It was surprising to me to find that any woman could grow up in a Christian country so ignorant and so uncared for. In the end, as you shall hear, she showed every mark of penitence and fell into a godly and pious life.