During the ship’s slow beating out I had had leisure to look about me, and I now knew that I was aboard the Dolphin, the privateer whose fitting out I had watched from the quayside.  Despite my sorry situation I felt a stirring of interest and excitement; a privateer would scarce put to sea for nothing, and the thought that ere many days were passed I might be in the midst of a sea fight helped to drive my grievances from my mind.  Withal I was puzzled:  if slavery was not to be my lot, what had my enemies gained?

But I was soon, in sooth, in no state either to feed my imagination or to nurse my wrongs.  The unaccustomed motion of the vessel produced on me the effect which but few escape; and we were no sooner fairly out in the Channel than I turned sick, and suffered the more severely, as I was told afterwards, because I had had no food for upwards of fifteen hours.  For a whole day I lay in helpless misery:  but then Captain Cawson (so he was named) himself came to me, hauled me to my feet, and with an oath bade me go and scrub the floor of the cook’s galley.  At the time I thought him a monster of brutality, driving me to my death; but I soon learned that nothing prolongs sea sickness, or indeed any sickness, so much as brooding on it, and the activity thus forced upon me had some part, I doubt not, in hastening my recovery.

From that time I was the ship’s drudge.  At everybody’s beck and call, I was employed from morning till night in all kinds of menial offices.  It was a hard life, and the treatment meted out to me was rough; but having got the better of my first rage and indignation, I resolved to make the best of my situation and to show no sullenness; besides I honestly wished to learn all that I could of a sailor’s duty, and felt some little amusement in thinking that, if my enemies had sought this way of crushing me, they had very much mistaken their man.  My activity and strength of limb stood me in good stead and won me a certain rough respect from officers and men, together with the real goodwill of a few of the better disposed among them.

After a day or two one old salt, named John Dilly, took me in a manner under his wing, and I made shift with his guidance to bear my part in shortening and letting out sail.  Fortunately the weather was mild, and the early days of my apprenticeship were not so terrible as they might have been had the vessel encountered the storms that are commonly experienced in those seas, and especially in the Bay of Biscay, in which we beat about for nigh a week in the hope of sighting a Frenchman.

From John Dilly I learned that Vetch’s position on board was that of purser, he having been introduced to the captain by Dick Cludde.  Vetch attempted no active measures of hostility against me; indeed, he kept religiously out of my way, fearing maybe that I might seize an opportunity to settle accounts with him.  Sometimes I saw him grin with malicious pleasure when he caught sight of me tarring ropes or engaged in some other arduous or unsavory task; but I never gratified him by giving sign of resentment or humiliation.