Just as we sailed from Bocca Chica, on our return
to Jamaica, I found myself threatened with the symptoms of this
terrible distemper; and knowing very well that I stood no chance
for my life, if I should be obliged to be in the cockpit, which
by this time was grown intolerable, even to people in health, by
reason of the heat and unwholesome smell of decayed provision, I
wrote a petition to the captain, representing my case, and humbly
imploring his permission to be among the soldiers in the middle
deck, for the benefit of the air: but I might have spared myself
the trouble; for this humane commander refused my request, and
ordered me to continue in the place allotted for the surgeon's
mates, or else be contented to be in the hospital, which, by the
by, was three degrees more offensive and more suffocating than
our own berth below. Another, in my condition, perhaps, would have
submitted to his fate, and died in a pet; but I could not brook
the thought of perishing so pitifully, after I had weathered so
many gales of hard fortune: I therefore, without minding Oakum's
injunction, prevailed upon the soldiers (whose good-will I had
acquired) to admit my hammock among them; and actually congratulated
myself upon my comfortable situation; which Crampley no sooner
understood, than he signified to the captain my contempt of his
orders, and was invested with power to turn me down again into my
proper habitation.
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