358 AN ORPHAN’S DISTRESS,

Our business was to relieve this distressed ship's crew, but not te
lie by for them; and though they were willing to steer the same
course with us for some days, yet we could carry no sail to keep
pace with a ship that had no masts. Jlowever, as their captain
begged of us to help him to set up a main-top-mast, and a kind of
a top-mast to his jury fore-mast, we did, as it were, lie by hi for
three or four days; and then, having given him five barrels of beef
and a barrel of pork, two hogsheads of biscuit, and a proportion of
pease, flour, and what other things we could spare; and taking
three casks of sugar, some rum, and some pieces of eight of them
for satisfaction, we left them, taking on board with us, at their
own earnest request, the priest, the youth, and the maid, and all
their goods.

The young lad was about seventeen years of age, a pretty, well-
bred, modest, and sensible youth, greatly dejected with the loss of
his mother, and, as it seems, had lost his father but a few months
before at Barbadoes. He begged of the surgeon to speak to me ta
take him out of the ship, for he said the cruel fellows had mur-
dered his mother. And indeed so they had, that is to say, pas-
sively ; for they might have spared a small sustenance to the poor
helpless widow that might have preserved her life, though it had
been but just to keep her alive. But hunger knows no friend, no
relation, no justice, no right; and therefore is remorseless, and
capable of no compassion.

The surgeon told him how far we were going, and how it would
carry him away from all his friends, and put him, perhaps, in as
bad circumstances almost as those we found him in; that is to say,
starving in the world. He said it mattered not whither he went,
if he was but delivered from the terrible crew he was among.
That the captain (by which he meant me, for he could know
nothing of my nephew) had saved his life, and he was sure would
not hurt him; and as for the maid, he was sure, if she came to
herself, she would be very thankful for it, let us carry them where
we would. ‘The surgeon represented the case so affectionately to
me that T yielded, and we took them both on board with all their
goods, except eleven hogsheads of sugar, which could not be
removed or come at; and as the youth hada bill of lading for