The night was warm, and my lungs being filled with the reek of their strong tobacco I determined to walk down by the river before returning to my lodging, in the hope of getting a breath of fresh air blowing in from the sea.  The river side was deserted and silent; the lights of the vessels at anchor increased the darkness around; and I was walking slowly along, wondering which of the lamps hung on Captain Reddaway’s vessel, when suddenly I found myself surrounded by a group of men who seemed to have sprung from nowhere.  Before I knew what was happening, much less make any movement of defence, I was being dragged by rough hands to the edge of the quay.  I shouted lustily for help, only to receive a crack on the head from one of the men, while another clapped his hand across my mouth.  I wriggled desperately, tripped up one fellow, and used my feet to some purpose on the shins of another; but there were so many of them that I was soon overpowered, and was quite helpless in their hands when they lugged me down the steps into a boat that lay moored below.

Throwing me into the bottom they pulled off; in a few minutes they came under the quarter of a large vessel in midstream; I was hauled up the side, and, more or less dazed with my rough handling, heard without understanding a loud voice giving orders.  In two minutes I was lying bound hand and foot in the fore part of the vessel, and there I remained, exposed to the open sky, until morning dawned.

Chapter 13:  Duguay-Trouin.

’Twas little sleep I got that night, my body smarting with the ill usage I had suffered, and my mind in a ferment of rage and dismay.  This was the third and the worst mischance that had befallen me since I left Shrewsbury, and no one would blame me overmuch, perhaps, had I given way to utter despair.  Old Woodrow had told me stories about such tricks of kidnapping, but, just as when we hear a parson denouncing sin we are apt to apply it to our neighbor and not ourselves, so I had never dreamed that I myself might be the victim of such an outrage.  And remembering what Woodrow had said, I broke out into a sweat of apprehension, for I knew that I could not have been impressed as a mariner to serve aboard a privateer, as was often done; only tried mariners were seized with that intent, and certainly no one would wish to teach a raw landsman his duties on a vessel engaged in such a perilous and desperate business.

I could only conclude, then, that the design in kidnapping me was to ship me to the American or West Indian plantations, whither every year hundreds of poor wretches were sent to a dismal slavery.  Woodrow had pointed out to me one day in the street a high magistrate of the city, who had made great wealth in the sugar trade, and did not disdain to add to it by selling flesh and blood.