Rough they were , sure enough ; and bad , I suppose ; but they had many virtues . They were kind when it occurred to them , simple even beyond the simplicity of a country lad like me , and had some glimmerings of honesty . There was one man , of maybe forty , that would sit on my berthside for hours and tell me of his wife and child . He was a fisher that had lost his boat , and thus been driven to the deep-sea voyaging . Well , it is years ago now : but I have never forgotten him . His wife -LRB- who was `` young by him , '' as he often told me -RRB- waited in vain to see her man return ; he would never again make the fire for her in the morning , nor yet keep the bairn when she was sick . Indeed , many of these poor fellows -LRB- as the event proved -RRB- were upon their last cruise ; the deep seas and cannibal fish received them ; and it is a thankless business to speak ill of the dead . Among other good deeds that they did , they returned my money , which had been shared among them ; and though it was about a third short , I was very glad to get it , and hoped great good from it in the land I was going to . The ship was bound for the Carolinas ; and you must not suppose that I was going to that place merely as an exile . The trade was even then much depressed ; since that , and with the rebellion of the colonies and the formation of the United States , it has , of course , come to an end ; but in those days of my youth , white men were still sold into slavery on the plantations , and that was the destiny to which my wicked uncle had condemned me . The cabin-boy Ransome -LRB- from whom I had first heard of these atrocities -RRB- came in at times from the round-house , where he berthed and served , now nursing a bruised limb in silent agony , now raving against the cruelty of Mr. Shuan . It made my heart bleed ; but the men had a great respect for the chief mate , who was , as they said , `` the only seaman of the whole jing-bang , and none such a bad man when he was sober . '' Indeed , I found there was a strange peculiarity about our two mates : that Mr. Riach was sullen , unkind , and harsh when he was sober , and Mr. Shuan would not hurt a fly except when he was drinking . I asked about the captain ; but I was told drink made no difference upon that man of iron . I did my best in the small time allowed me to make some thing like a man , or rather I should say something like a boy , of the poor creature , Ransome . But his mind was scarce truly human . He could remember nothing of the time before he came to sea ; only that his father had made clocks , and had a starling in the parlour , which could whistle `` The North Countrie ; '' all else had been blotted out in these years of hardship and cruelties . He had a strange notion of the dry land , picked up from sailor 's stories : that it was a place where lads were put to some kind of slavery called a trade , and where apprentices were continually lashed and clapped into foul prisons . In a town , he thought every second person a decoy , and every third house a place in which seamen would be drugged and murdered . To be sure , I would tell him how kindly I had myself been used upon that dry land he was so much afraid of , and how well fed and carefully taught both by my friends and my parents : and if he had been recently hurt , he would weep bitterly and swear to run away ; but if he was in his usual crackbrain humour , or -LRB- still more -RRB- if he had had a glass of spirits in the roundhouse , he would deride the notion .
It was Mr. XXXXX -LRB- Heaven forgive him ! -RRB-
Carolinas Ransome Riach States bairn crackbrain fire morning round-house third