The tarpaulin was pulled off Harry by a man who took the opportunity to curse him. The gag was removed from his mouth; then he was left to himself. He thought he had reached the lowest depths of misery. Something he had learnt of the awful fate in store for him in the Plantations. Many such poor wretches as himself had sailed across the seas in the hope of redeeming themselves from debt by years of unremitting toil. On their arrival they had become, body and soul, the property of their masters. Treated as no better than convicts, they were put to the most degrading labour, and their employers contrived to keep them, even as labourers, so deeply in debt for clothes and the common necessaries of life that the day of redemption never dawned for them, and they lived and died in abject slavery. This was to be his fate! What a declension from the bright destiny that seemed to be before him but a few months ago! The foc’sle was dark and noisome. The smell of bilge water and the reek of the lamp affixed to the side nauseated Harry. Physically and mentally, he was desperately wretched. And through all his misery he was overcome by sheer puzzlement. Hitherto he had surmised that, being young and strong, he had been marked as an easy prey by the professional kidnappers who prowled the streets of London, trepanning unfortunate young men likely to fetch a good price with shipmasters or unscrupulous colonial merchants. But the unexpected sight of Mr. Berkeley in Captain Aglionby’s company on deck had startled him into a new theory. Many things recurred to his mind. He remembered the bitter feud that had subsisted between his father and the squire; the disappearance of Captain Aglionby after a quarrel, as village gossip said, with Mr. Berkeley; the horseman riding after the coach; the strange warnings he had received from Sherebiah. He could not but feel that these incidents were in some way connected; he began to be convinced that his present situation was due ultimately to the enmity of the squire—the gaunt, sinister old man who was indirectly responsible for his father’s death. But though this was his conclusion, he was none the less puzzled. Why should the malignity of the squire pursue the son, now that the father was removed? What harm had _he_ ever done, or could he ever do, to the lord of the manor? Was the squire so unrelenting, was his malice so remorseless, that he must bring black ruin upon a boy in vengeance for his baulked will? It seemed inconceivable. Yet what other motive could he have? The more he thought of it, the more puzzled Harry became.