Oh! ye who are women of gentle nurture, think of such a thing as this: to stand exposed to the curious gaze of rough and ribald men; to be bought and sold like a horse or an ox at the fair! At first my eyes swam and I saw nothing, and should have fallen but that the Captain placed his hand upon my arm, and so I was steadied. Then my sight cleared, and I could look down upon the faces of the men below. There was no place whither I could fly and hide. It would be more shameful still (because it might make them laugh) to burst into tears. Why, I thought, why had I not accepted the Captain's offer and suffered my name to be entered as one of those who had died on the voyage and been buried in the sea? Down in the waist the gentlemen gazed and gasped, in astonishment. It was no new thing for the planters to buy political prisoners. Oliver Cromwell sent over a shipload of Irishmen first, and another shipload of those engaged in the rising of Penruddock and Grove (among them were gentlemen, divines, and officers, of whom a few yet survived on the island). But as yet no gentlewoman at all had been sent out for political reasons. Wherefore, I suppose, they looked so amazed, and gazed first at me and then at one another and then gasped for breath. 'Alice Eykin, gentlemen,' said the salesman, who had a tongue which, as they say, ran upon wheels, 'is a young gentlewoman, the daughter, I am informed, of the Rev. Comfort Eykin, Doctor of Divinity, deceased, formerly Rector of Bradford Orcas, in the county of Somerset, and sometime Fellow of his college at Oxford, a very learned Divine. She hath had the misfortune to have taken part in the Monmouth Rebellion, and was one of those Maids of Taunton who gave the Duke his flags, as you have heard by the latest advices. Therefore, she is sent abroad for a term of ten years. Gentlemen, there can be no doubt that her relations will not endure that this young lady--as beautiful as she is unfortunate, and as tender as she is beautiful--should be exposed to the same hard treatment as the rogues and thieves whom you have just had put up for sale. They will, I am privately assured'--I heard this statement with amazement--'gladly purchase her freedom, after which, unless she is permitted to return, the society of our Colony will rejoice in the residence among them of one so lovely and so accomplished. Meantime, she must be sold like the rest.' 'Did Monmouth make war with women for his followers?' asked a gentleman of graver aspect than most. 'I, for one, will have no part or share in such traffic. Are English gentlewomen, because their friends are rebels, to be sent into the fields with the negroes?' 'Your wife would be jealous,' said another, and then they all laughed.