5 Pirates!

CHAPTER 5 Pirates! As much as my luck had changed when I arrived in London, the opposite was now true. The second voyage to Africa soon became my worst trip yet. I soon learned that there were far worse things than a capful of wind and a close rescue! As our ship made a course for the Canary Islands, we were surprised by a pirate ship.

They chased us for hours with full sails blazing. When they caught up to us, our only chance was to fight. We prepared our guns for battle. The pirate ship came up on our quarter-deck. We took our chances and fired all of our guns directly into the rogue ship. They returned fire with their large cannons. All the pirates started firing their guns, too, but not a single shot hit any of our men! This success was short lived, and within minutes about sixty pirates boarded our ship. They sliced our rigging with their swords, and then attacked our sails. We fought them off for as long as we could with our own rifles and swords (and got them off the deck twice!). Victory was not to be ours, and we surrendered before any lives were lost. The pirates loaded us onto their ship as prisoners. We sailed to the port of Sallee, on the northern coast of Africa. Most of the men on board were sold up the country as slaves.

The pirate captain took a liking to me because I was both young and nimble. He decided to keep me. In one fell swoop, I went from merchant to slave. I was extremely unhappy. My father's words echoed in my mind. I was convinced that I would always be unlucky. My selfish desire to leave home would never amount to anything but misery. I spent long days working in my master's garden. There were also many household chores to do. My heart and body longed to go back to sea, where I would at least have a chance to escape. The master never took me on his fishing trips. Instead, he left me behind to work. Each day felt longer than the one before, and two years passed slowly. Day and night I dreamt of little else but escaping. Without friends, I had only my own thoughts to keep my company. The work was hard and the sun

was hot. Was this how I would spend the rest of my life? Trapped in a foreign country, a slave to a terrible master?