Several times he expressed his wish to return to America (of
which he was not a native), and, on the whole, I do not think he had any
real sense of his precarious condition, notwithstanding that he assented
to the doctor's hint to that effect. He sank away so much at one time,
that they brought him wine in a tin cup, with a spout to drink out of,
and he mustered strength to raise himself in his bed and drink; then
hemmed, with rather a disappointed air, as if it did not stimulate and
refresh him, as drink ought to do. When he had finished his evidence
(which Mr. Wilding took down in writing from his mouth), he marked his
cross at the foot of the paper, and we ceased to torment him with further
question. His deposition will probably do no good, so far as the
punishment of the persons implicated is concerned; for he appears to have
come on board in a sickly state, and never to have been well during the
passage. On a pallet, close by his bed, lay another seaman of the same
ship, who had likewise been abused by the same men, and bore more
ostensible marks of ill usage than this man did, about the head and face.
There is a most dreadful state of things aboard our ships. Hell itself
can be no worse than some of them, and I do pray that some New-Englander
with the rage of reform in him may turn his thoughts this way. The
first step towards better things--the best practicable step for the
present--is to legalize flogging on shipboard; thereby doing away with
the miscellaneous assaults and batteries, kickings, fisticuffings,
ropes'-endings, marline-spikings, which the inferior officers continually
perpetrate, as the only mode of keeping up anything like discipline.
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