The “Black Moll”

I have no intention, my dears, of dwelling upon that part of my adventures which must be as painful to you as to me, the very recollection of which, after all these years, suffices to cause the blood within me to run cold.  In my youth men whose natures shrank not from encounter with their enemies lacked not, I warrant you, a checkered experience.  Those of us who are wound the tightest go the farthest and strike the hardest.  Nor is it difficult for one, the last of whose life is being recorded, to review the outspread roll of it, and trace the unerring forces which have drawn for themselves.

Some, indeed, traverse this world weighing, before they partake, pleasure and business alike.  But I am not sure, my children, that they better themselves; or that God, in His all-wise judgment, prefers them to such as are guided by the divine impulse with which He has endowed them.  Far be it from me to advise rashness or imprudence, as such; nor do I believe you will take me so.  But I say unto you:  do that which is right, and let God, not man, be your interpreter.

My narrative awaits me.

I came to my wits with an immoderate feeling of faintness and sickness, with no more remembrance of things past than has a man bereft of reason.  And for some time I swung between sense and oblivion before an overpowering stench forced itself upon my nostrils, accompanied by a creaking, straining sound and sweeping motion.  I could see nothing for the pitchy blackness.  Then I recalled what had befallen me, and cried aloud to God in my anguish, for I well knew I had been carried aboard ship, and was at sea.  I had oftentimes heard of the notorious press-gang which supplied the need of the King’s navy, and my first thought was that I had fallen in their clutches.  But I wondered that they had dared attack a person of my consequence.

I had no pain.  I lay in a bunk that felt gritty and greasy to the touch, and my hair was matted behind by a clot of blood.  I had been stripped of my clothes, and put into some coarse and rough material, the colour and condition of which I could not see for want of light.  I began to cast about me, to examine the size of the bunk, which I found to be narrow, and plainly at some distance from the deck, for I laid hold upon one of the rough beams above me.  By its curvature I knew it to be a knee, and thus I came to the caulked sides of the vessel, and for the first time heard the rattling thud and swish of water on the far side of it.  I had no sooner made this discovery, which drew from me an involuntary groan, when a ship’s lanthorn was of a sudden thrust over me, and I perceived behind it a head covered with shaggy hair and beard, and beetling brows.  Never had I been in such a terrifying presence.

“Damn my blood and bones, life signals at last!  Another three bells gone, my silks and laces, and we had given you to the sharks.”

The man hung his lanthorn to a hook on the beam, and thrust a case-bottle of rum toward me, at the same time biting off a great quid of tobacco.  For all my alarm I saw that his manner was not unkindly, and as I was conscious of a consuming thirst I seized and tipped it eagerly.