Then he said I should be confined in a narrow space near to Kingston, and should have no freedom; but the admiral had his way, and I was given freedom of the whole island till word should come from the Admiralty what should be done with me.

To the governor's mind it was dangerous allowing me freedom, a man convicted of crime, who had been imprisoned, had been a mutineer, had stolen one of his majesty's ships, and had fled to the Caribbean Sea.

He thought I should well be at the bottom of the ocean, where he would soon have put me, I make no doubt, if it had not been for the admiral, and Captain Ivy--you do not know him, I think--who played a good part to me, when men once close friends have deserted me.
Well, we had, Michael and I, but twenty pounds between us; and if there was not plenty of free food in the island, God knows what would have become of us! But there it was, fresh in every field, by every wayside, at every doorway.

We could not starve, or die of thirst, or faint for lack of sleep, since every bush was a bed in spite of the garapatos or wood-ticks, the snore of the tree-toad, the hoarse shriek of the macaw, and the shrill gird of the guinea- fowl.

Every bed was thus free, and there was land to be got for a song, enough to grow what would suffice for two men's daily wants.
But we did not rest long upon the land--I have it still, land which cost me five pounds out of the twenty, and for the rest there was an old but on the little place--five acres it was, and good land too, where you could grow anything at all.