But wasn't I glad to be free! I had learnt many a lesson of use to me in after life, the most important of all being to sympathise with other people's miseries, and to make allowance for the faults and shortcomings of humanity.
On the other hand, experience is a severe taskmaster, and it taught me to be somewhat insubordinate in my notions.

I fear I must confess that this spirit of insubordination has never left me.
On my arrival at home my relations failed to see in me an ill-used lad (I was only sixteen), and seemed inclined to disbelieve my yarns; but this did not alter the facts, nor can I ever forget what I went through during that 'reign of terror,' as it might well be called.
People may wonder how was it in the days of Benbow and his successors no complaints were made.

To this I answer, first, that the men of those days, knowing the utter hopelessness of complaining, preferred to 'grin and bear;' secondly, that neither officers nor men were supposed to possess such a thing as feeling, when they had once put their foot on board a man-of-war.

Then there were the almost interminable sea voyages under sail, during which unspeakable tyrannies could be practised, unheard of beyond the ship, and unpunished.

It must be remembered that there were no telegraphs, no newspaper correspondents, no questioning public, so that the evil side of human nature (so often shown in the very young in their cruelty to animals) had its swing, fearless of retribution.
Let us leave this painful subject, with the consoling thought that we shall never see the like again..