"But that shall never be, Jack my hearty," Captain Handsell exclaimed, when, after many more pipes of Tobacco and rummers of Punch, he had explained these wonderful things to me. "I shall lose my half share in the venture, and shall have to tell a rare lie to yonder old Skin-a-flea-for-the-hide-and-fat in London; but what o' that? I tell thee I won't have the sale of thy flesh and blood on my conscience. No slave shall you be, forsooth. I have an aunt at Kingston, as honest a woman as ever broke biscuit, although she has got a dash of the tar-brush on her mug, and she shall take charge of thee; and if thou were a gentleman born, I'll be hanged if thou sha'n't be a gentleman bred." It would have been more fitted to the performance of this Honourable and Upright Action towards one that he had no motive at all in serving (in Fact, his Interest lay right the other way), that I should be able to chronicle a sensible Reformation in my Commander's bearing and conduct towards others; but, alas, that I am unable to do; the truth being that he continued, unto the very end of our voyage, to be towards the Hands the same brutal and merciless Tyrant that he had once, in the days of his Rope's-End Discipline, been towards me. 'Twas Punch and Cobbing, Tobacco and Ugly Words, from the rising of the Sun until the setting of the same. And for this reason it is (having seen so many Contradictions in Human character) that I am never surprised to hear of a Good Action on the part of a very Bad Man, or of a Bad Action done by him who is ordinarily accounted a very Good one. _The Humane Hopwood_ was a very shy Sailer,--being, in truth, as Leaky an old Tub as ever escaped breaking up for Fire-Wood at Lumberers' Wharfs,--and we were seven weeks at Sea before we fell in with a trade-wind, and then setting every Rag we could hoist, went gaily before that Favourable breeze, and so cast anchor at Port Royal in the island of Jamaica. Captain Handsell was as good as his word. Not a syllable did he say to the Sheriff of Kingston about my not being a Transport, or being, indeed, in the Flesh at all in those parts; for he argued that the Sheriff might have some foregatherings with the Knight and Alderman of Bishopsgate Street by correspondence, and that the Wealthy Extortioner might make use of his credit in the Sugar Islands to do me, some day or another, an ill turn. But he had me privily on shore when the Transports had all been assigned to different task-masters; and in due time he introduced me to his Aunt, his Brother's Wife indeed (and I believe he had come out to the Island with an Old-Bailey Passport; but Rum and the climate had been too strong for him, and he had so Died and left her a Widow).