It is to this fact that I
have always attributed, under Divine Providence, the degree of health
which I preserved on board. I was thereby also, at times, enabled to
procure several necessary and comfortable things, such as tea, sugar,
etc. so that, wretchedly as I was situated, my condition was far
preferable to that of most of my fellow sufferers, which has ever been
to me a theme of sincere and lasting gratitude to Heaven.
"But terrible indeed was the condition of most of my fellow
captives. Memory still brings before me those emaciated beings, moving
from the Galley with their wretched pittance of meat; each creeping to
the spot where his mess was assembled, to divide it with a group of
haggard and sickly creatures, their garments hanging in tatters round
their meagre limbs, and the hue of death upon their careworn faces. By
these it was consumed with the scanty remnants of bread, which was
often mouldy and filled with worms. And even from this vile fare they
would rise up in torments from the cravings of unsatisfied hunger and
thirst.
"No vegetables of any description were ever afforded us by our inhuman
keepers. Good Heaven! what a luxury to us would then have been even a
few potatoes!--if but the very leavings of swine. * * *
"Oh my heart sinks, my pitying eyes o'erflow,
When memory paints the picture of their woe
Where my poor countrymen in bondage wait
The slow enfranchisement of lingering fate,
Greeting with groans the unwelcome night's return,
While rage and shame their gloomy bosoms burn,
And chiding, every hour, the slow-paced sun,
Endure their woes till all his race was run
No one to mark the sufferers with a tear
No friend to comfort, and no hope to cheer,
And like the dull, unpitied brutes repair
To stalls as wretched, and as coarse a fare;
Thank Heaven one day of misery was o'er,
And sink to sleep, and wish to wake no more.
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