There he found a ship bound for the West Indies, and in
this he started out on his life's career. He had no money to pay his
passage, and he therefore followed the usual custom of those days and
sold himself for a term of three years to an agent who was taking out a
number of men to work on the plantations. In the places where these men
were enlisted they were termed servants, but when they got to the new
world they were generally called slaves and treated as such.
When young Morgan reached the Barbadoes he was resold to a planter, and
during his term of service he probably worked a good deal harder and was
treated much more roughly than any of the laborers on his father's farm.
But as soon as he was a free man he went to Jamaica, and there were few
places in the world where a young man could be more free and more
independent than in this lawless island.
Here were rollicking and blustering "flibustiers," and here the young
man determined to study piracy. He was not a sailor and hunter who by
the force of circumstances gradually became a buccaneer, but he
deliberately selected his profession, and immediately set to work to
acquire a knowledge of its practice. There was a buccaneer ship about to
sail from Jamaica, and on this Morgan enlisted. He was a clever fellow
and very soon showed himself to be a brave and able sailor.
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