The Perils of Certain English Prisoners
CHAPTER I -- THE ISLAND OF SILVER-STORE
It was in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and forty- four, that I, Gill
Davis to command, His Mark, having then the honour to be a private in the Royal
Marines, stood a-leaning over the bulwarks of the armed sloop Christopher Columbus, in
the South American waters off the Mosquito shore.
My lady remarks to me, before I go any further, that there is no such christian-name as
Gill, and that her confident opinion is, that the name given to me in the baptism wherein I
was made, &c., was Gilbert. She is certain to be right, but I never heard of it. I was a
foundling child, picked up somewhere or another, and I always understood my christian-
name to be Gill. It is true that I was called Gills when employed at Snorridge Bottom
betwixt Chatham and Maidstone to frighten birds; but that had nothing to do with the
Baptism wherein I was made, &c., and wherein a number of things were promised for me
by somebody, who let me alone ever afterwards as to performing any of them, and who, I
consider, must have been the Beadle. Such name of Gills was entirely owing to my
cheeks, or gills, which at that time of my life were of a raspy description.
My lady stops me again, before I go any further, by laughing exactly in her old way and
waving the feather of her pen at me. That action on her part, calls to my mind as I look at
her hand with the rings on it--Well! I won't! To be sure it will come in, in its own place.
But it's always strange to me, noticing the quiet hand, and noticing it (as I have done, you
know, so many times) a-fondling children and grandchildren asleep, to think that when
blood and honour were up--there! I won't! not at present!--Scratch it out.
She won't scratch it out, and quite honourable; because we have made an understanding
that everything is to be taken down, and that nothing that is once taken down shall be
scratched out. I have the great misfortune not to be able to read and write, and I am
speaking my true and faithful account of those Adventures, and my lady is writing it,
word for word.
I say, there I was, a-leaning over the bulwarks of the sloop Christopher Columbus in the
South American waters off the Mosquito shore: a subject of his Gracious Majesty King
George of England, and a private in the Royal Marines.
In those climates, you don't want to do much. I was doing nothing. I was thinking of the
shepherd (my father, I wonder?) on the hillsides by Snorridge Bottom, with a long staff,
and with a rough white coat in all weathers all the year round, who used to let me lie in a
corner of his hut by night, and who used to let me go about with him and his sheep by
day when I could get nothing else to do, and who used to give me so little of his victuals
and so much of his staff, that I ran away from him--which was what he wanted all along,
I expect--to be knocked about the world in preference to Snorridge Bottom. I had been
