"I should rather think you would; but such isn't your luck, little Jack Dangerous. What would you say if I was to tell you that you ain't a Transport at all?" I stammered out something, I know not what, but could make no substantial reply. "Not a bit of it," continued Captain Handsell, who by this time was getting somewhat Brisk with his afternoon's Punch. "Hang it, who's afraid? I like thee, lad. I'm off my bargain, and don't care a salt herring if I'm a loser by a few broad pieces in not sticking to it. I tell thee, Jack, thou'rt Free, as Free as I am; leastways if we get to Jamaica without going to Davy Jones's Locker; for on blue water no man can say he's Free. No; not the Skipper even." And then he told me, to my exceeding Amazement and Delight, of what an Iniquitous Transaction I had very nearly been made the victim. It seems that although the Pardon granted me after the Petition I had sent to his Majesty was conditional on my transporting myself to the Plantations, further influence had been made for me in London,--by whom I knew not then, but I have since discovered,--and on the very Day of the arrival of our condemned crew in London, an Entire and Free Pardon had been issued for John Dangerous and lodged in the hands of Sir Basil Hopwood at his House in Bishopsgate Street. Along with this merciful Document there came a letter from one of his Majesty's principal Secretaries of State, in which directions were given that I was to be delivered over to a person who was my Guardian. And that I was in no danger of being again given up to the villains Cadwallader and Talmash, or their Instrument Gnawbit, was clear, I think, from what Captain Handsell told me:--That the Person bringing the letter--the Pardon itself being in the hands of a King's Messenger--had the appearance, although dressed in a lay habit, of being a Foreign Ecclesiastic. The crafty Extortioner of a Knight and Alderman makes answer that I had not come with the other Transports to London, but had been left sick at Brentford, in the care of an agent of his there; but he entreats the Foreign Person to go visit Newgate, where he had another gang of unhappy persons for Transportation, and see if I had arrived. And all this while the wretch knew that I was safely clapped up in the yard of the Borough Clink. And the Foreign Person being met at the Old Bailey by one of Hopwood's creatures, this Thing takes him to walk on the leads of the Sessions House, praying him not to enter the gaol, where many had lately been stricken with the Distemper, and by and by up comes a Messenger all hot as it seemed with express riding,--though his sweat and dust were all Forged,--and says that a gang of Ruffians have broken up the Cage of Brentford, where, for greater safety, the Boy Dangerous had been bestowed; that these Ruffians were supposed to be the remnant of the Blacks of Charlwood Chase who had escaped from capture; and that they had stolen away the Boy Dangerous,