those landscapes, that when you take them
away from the fire-heat, change to snowy grey
from April green. The poor little son of the
bankrupt doctor was bound apprentice to
the seas (at the usual premium from Colson's
school of ten pounds) to Captain Moses Lilly,
and he sailed from Bristol in the ship the Prince
of Wales, in the pleasant month aforesaid, for
Jamaica. A religious quick boy, fresh from
a gentle home, and six years in a good and
almost monastic school, taken from good
food and kind friends, he was hurried off to
rough, stern, brutal masters, to be sea-sick
for months, and all that time sworn at and
beaten for his untoward awkwardness. It
seemed to him that he had got among the
"condemned." Ill, and with no friend, the poor
boy's heart was almost broken with grief.

It was a rough life, the sea, then, and little
Silas Told had his share of the hardships.
The vessel, on her way home from the Bay of
Campeachy and Jamaica, was for fourteen
weeks short of provisions, the crew being
reduced, after the third week, to a biscuit and
two-thirds of a pint of water a day. The men
would certainly have all perished but that a
thunder-rain descended upon them off Cuba, and the
captain, stopping the scuppers, saved six casks
of muddy bitter water by swabbing the decks and
then wringing the swabs into the tubs. When
they reached Blue Fields (west point of Jamaica),
the last half pint of maggoty water had been
drunk, and there was not a biscuit or a spoonful
of flour in the hold. Mr. Told, in his
autobiography (which is a curious picture of a
sailor's life in the last century), says:

"When we came to an anchor in Blue Fields
Bay, we hoisted out the long-boat, stowed her
full of casks, and despatched her for the fresh
water, when one of our men fell flat upon his
belly, and drank so immoderately, that a few
hours after he came on board he expired; and
the next morning we sewed him up in a hammock
and threw him overboard, when a large
shark descended after him, and, we supposed,
swallowed the whole body."

While the Prince of Wales was riding at
anchor in Kingston harbour, with one hundred
and five hogsheads of sugar just on board, there
came on a hurricane, preceded by ominous
splitting noises in the air. This storm raged
from eight o'clock at night till six o'clock
in the following evening. Told's ship parted
all her three new cables, and drove twelve
miles down the harbour. Seventy-six sail of
other ships were dismasted, and cast high
and dry on land. A heavy brigantine was tossed
upon a wharf, and a sloop of one hundred tons
hurled upon its deck. Hundreds of cocoa-nut
trees were also snapped or torn up by the
roots. The hurricane ceased suddenly, blew
again madly for an hour, then lulled for good.
During two or three days after, drowned seamen
were washed on shore for miles down the
harbour.

The hurricane was followed by a pestilence.
Every morning Told (himself sick with fever
and ague) saw thirty or forty corpses carried
past his window. The brutal captain deserted
the sick sailor, and left him to the tender
mercies of a negro, who once a day brought a
dose of Jesuits' bark to the warehouse, where
he had been swung in a hammock. Told,
describing his utter misery for eleven months,
says:

"At length my master gave me up, and I
wandered up and down the town, almost
parched with the insufferable blaze of the sun,
till I was resolved to lay me down and die, as
I had neither money nor friend. Accordingly
I fixed upon a dunghill on the east end of the
town of Kingston; and, being in so weak a
condition, I pondered much upon Job's case,
and considered mine similar to that of his.
However, I was fully resigned to death, nor
had I the slightest expectations of relief from
any quarter; yet the kind providence of God
was over me, and raised me up a friend in an
entire stranger. A London captain, coming
by, was struck with the sordid object, came
up to me, and, in a very compassionate manner,
asked me if I was sensible of any friend upon
the island of whom I could obtain relief. He
likewise asked me to whom I belonged. I
answered, to Captain Moses Lilly, and had been
cast away in the late hurricane. This captain
appeared to have some knowledge of my master,
and, cursing him for a barbarous villain, told
me he would compel him to take proper care
of me." A quarter of an hour after, Told's
master arrived, and took him to a public-house,
where he was lodged with a Mrs. Hutchinson.
When he recovered, he was taken home by
Captain David Jones, a kind and humane man,
captain of the Montserrat. The boatswain of
this vessel cured the poor boy of his fever in
five hours, and he became more lively and
active than before.

On the voyage home an accident happened
strikingly evidencing the superstitions then
prevalent among even sailors of some education.
Five weeks after losing sight of the green
Bermudas, the captain ordered a man to keep a
bright look-out from the topmast-head, expecting
soon to catch sight of Cape Clear. One
morning, about seven o'clock, the look-out at
the mast-head threw out the signal for land,
about two points on the weather-bow; but as
at that time the ship was running with the wind
on the starboard-beam, the captain deemed it
most advisable to brace all sharp up, and lie as
near the wind as we possibly could. The land
soon became conspicuous to the naked eye from
the deck, and the course was changed as the
land edged round, but there was no attempt to
make any nearer approach towards it than a
full league. For ten hours the men watched
it as they cleared the decks, bending the cables
ready for anchorage, or to run into harbour in
case of any emergency. Told says:

"I do not remember ever to have seen any
place apparently more fertile, or better cultivated;
the fields seeming to be covered with
verdure, and very beautiful; and as the surf