Fifty-seven of them had lived to gain their freedom after four years of slavery. Their sad story ended more happily than might have been expected, for when they returned to England the king was pleased to give them a bounty of five pounds each. The Jews in London supplied them with clothing and showed them many acts of kindness. Mr. Rich, manager of one of the principal theatres, presented each man with five pounds and devoted the proceeds of a night’s performance to their use. The proprietor of another public exhibition did the like, on which occasion they appeared in iron chains and collars such as they had worn in slavery. The privateersman of the _Inspector_ who wrote the narrative of the adventures and miseries in Morocco was a hardy salt, if ever there was one. Unharmed by the experience, this Thomas Troughton lived until 1806, and died at the uncommonly ripe old age of one hundred and fourteen years. It seems proper that one of these true tales of luckless seamen long in exile should have for its hero a mariner of that rugged New England, the early fortitude and daring of which laid the enduring foundations of this nation. In the year of 1676 Mr. Ephraim How of New Haven found it necessary to undertake a journey to Boston. Express-trains were not then covering the distance between these cities in four hours. In fact, there were not even post-roads or stage-coaches, and the risk of being potted by hostile Indians was by no means negligible. To the Pilgrims and the Puritans of that era the country was still a wilderness almost as soon as they ventured inland beyond the sound of the sea. As was common enough, Mr. Ephraim How had a vessel of his own to carry the cargoes which, as a merchant, he sold to his neighbors of the New Haven colony. They were a web-footed race of pioneers who traded and farmed and sailed or fished to earn a thrifty dollar. For his business trip to Boston Mr. How sensibly went by sea as an easier and quicker route than by land. With him in his small ketch of seventeen tons went his two sons as sailors, another youth named Caleb Jones, whose father was a magistrate in New Haven, a Mr. Augur, who was a passenger, and a boy, unnamed, who probably cooked the pork and potatoes and scrubbed the pots in the galley. It was in the month of August, and the ketch made a pleasant voyage of it around Cape Cod and into Boston Bay.