This man was a tyrant, if ever
there was one, and possessed of all the passion and caprice of the worst
description of those who delight in lording it over their
fellow-creatures. There was not a week that he had not some of my
unhappy fellow-servants before a magistrate, often for the most trivial
faults--a word, a look--and had them flogged by sentence of the court,
by the scourger of the district, till the blood streamed from their
backs. Knowing how little consideration there is for the unhappy convict
in all cases of difference with his taskmaster, and that however unjust
or unreasonable the latter's complaints may be, they are always readily
entertained by the subordinate authorities, and carefully recorded
against the former to his prejudice, I took care to give him no offence.
To say nothing of his positive orders, I obeyed his every slightest wish
with a promptitude and alacrity that left him no shadow of ground to
complain of me. It was a difficult task; but it being for my interest
that no complaint of me, just or unjust, should be put on record
against me, I bore all with what I must call exemplary patience and
fortitude.
I have already said that my new master was a man of the most tyrannical
disposition--cruel, passionate, and vindictive. He was all this; and his
miserable fate--a fate which overtook him while I was in his
employment--was, in a great measure, the result of his ungovernable and
merciless temper.
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