Midday North and South 219 



a slave ship to the West Indies in his teens, had been confined in a 

 Spanish dungeon in Cuba for escaping from a labor gang in the Ja- 

 maican cane fields, and had then been pressed into the service of the 

 Spanish Crown on a vessel whose crew promptly mutinied and took 

 to piracy. Young men who had experienced such things and had then 

 been captured by their original persecutors and shipped to still an- 

 other continent in a convict ship did not know how to cry — at least, 

 they usually did not, in the year of grace 1825. Thus the sight was 

 somewhat surprising to one Captain Sean McNamara, master of the 

 whaler Shannon^ when he topped the bluff and came upon the 

 young man. 



The captain stopped in dumfounded amazement because he had 

 believed until then that only his people gave way to their emotions 

 in such an obvious manner. He shifted his pipe to the extreme corner 

 of his mouth and refrained from puffing upon it. What, he turned 

 over in his agile mind, could possibly have so affected the lad? Every- 

 thing seemed to be outstandingly serene, and although the youth was 

 unshod, it was summer and he seemed otherwise to be adequately 

 clothed and fed. Sean McNamara had just about come to the conclu- 

 sion that some precious girl must be the cause of this outrage when 

 the young man suddenly turned and their eyes met. At that moment 

 it would have been hard to say which of the two had the greatest 

 desire to flee. Instead, they remained staring fixedly at each other in 

 abashed silence. Finally Sean McNamara's pipe fell out of his slack 

 jaw. 



Colin Collins immediately sprang to his feet and, turning away, 

 hastily ran the sleeve of his shirt over his eyes before making ready 

 to take off. In that movement, however, the captain espied a glaring 

 brand mark on the youth's right forearm, and his eyes opened in 

 further amazement. Even before retrieving his pipe, he called out: 



"Be not afeard, me lad, the King's men are not about these parts 

 as yet. Ye be among friends here." 



It was not so much the words spoken as the soft kindliness of their 

 tone that arrested the young man from his impending headlong flight. 

 No one had spoken to him thus before at any time in his Ufe. There 

 was something in the speech that complemented both his own strange 

 mood and the glory of this new world. Although he did not compre- 

 hend the fact then, it spoke of freedom, which was something Colin 



