How I Fought In The Dark With One Pompey, A Great Blackamoor

I was yet upon my knees when came Job the quartermaster with two men who, at his command, dragged me to my feet and out upon deck; cursing my hampering fetters, they tumbled me down the quarter-ladder and so down into the waist of the ship.

Now as I went I kept my eyes upraised to the serene majesty of the heavens; the moon rode high amid a glory of stars, and as I looked it seemed I had never seen them so bright and wonderful, never felt the air so good and sweet upon my lips.

Being come to the fore-hatchway I checked there, despite my captors' buffets and curses, to cast a final, long look up, above and round about me, for I had a sudden uneasy feeling, a dreadful suspicion that once I descended into the gloom below I never should come forth alive. So I stared eagerly upon these ever-restless waters, so bright beneath the moon, upon the white sands of Deliverance Beach, on lofty palmetto and bush-girt cliff and then, shivering despite all my resolution, I suffered them to drag me down into that place of shadows.

I remember a sharp, acrid smell, the reek of bilge and thick, mephitic air as I stumbled on betwixt my captors through this foul-breathing dimness until a door creaked, yawning suddenly upon a denser blackness, into which I was thrust so suddenly that I fell, clashing my fetters, and lying thus, heard the door slammed and bolted.