These had even grown so bold of late, as to be seeking permission to erect a meeting-house; which almost moved the Puritan divines to prophesy famine, earthquakes and pestilence as the results of such an ungodly toleration of heresy.
Then there were a number of Baptists, who also now dwelt in peace, under the King's protection.
Adding to the foregoing the people without any religion to speak of, who principally belonged to or were connected with the seafaring class, and Master Raymond found that he had a pretty clear idea of the inhabitants of Boston.
In relation to the Witchcraft prosecutions, the young Englishman ascertained that the above classes seemed to favor the prosecutions just in proportion to the extent of their Puritan orthodoxy.

The great majority of the Puritans believed devoutly in witches, and in the duty of obeying the command, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." And generally in proportion to a Puritan church-member's orthodoxy, was the extent of his belief in witchcraft, and the fierceness of his exterminating zeal.
The Episcopalians and the Baptists were either very lukewarm, or else in decided opposition to the prosecutions looking upon them as simply additional proofs of Puritan narrowness, intolerance and bigotry.
The Quakers held to the latter opinion even more firmly than the liberal Episcopalians and Baptists: adding to it the belief that it was a judgment allowed to come upon the Puritans, to punish them for their cruelty to God's chosen messengers.
As for the seafaring class, they looked upon the whole affair as a piece of madness, which could only overtake people whose contracted notions were a result of perpetually living in one place, and that on the land.
And since the arrest of a man so well thought of, and of their own class as Captain Alden, the vocabulary allowed by the law in Boston was entirely too limited to embrace adequately a seaman's emphatic sense of the iniquitous proceedings.

As one of them forcibly expressed himself to Master Raymond:--"He would be _condemned_, if he wouldn't like to see the _condemned_ town of Boston, and all its _condemned_ preachers, buried like Port Royal, ten _condemned_ fathoms deep, under the _condemned_ soil upon which it was built!" He used another emphatic word of course, in the place of the word _condemned_; but that doubtless was because at that time they had not our "revised version" of the New Testament.
The sea-captain who expressed himself in this emphatic way to Master Raymond, was the captain in whose vessel he had come over from England, and who had made another voyage back and forth since that time.

The young man was strolling around the wharves, gazing at the vessels when he had been accosted by the aforesaid captain.

At that particular moment however, he had come to a stand, earnestly regarding, as he had several times before, a vessel that was lying anchored out in the stream.
After passing some additional words with the captain upon various matters, and especially upon the witches, a subject that every conversation at that time was apt to be very full of, he turned towards the water and said:-- "That seems to be a good craft out there." It was a vessel of two masts, slender and raking, and with a long, low hull--something of the model which a good many years later, went by the name of the Baltimore clipper.
"Yes, she is a beauty!" replied the captain.
"She looks as if she might be a good sailer." "Good! I reckon she is.