James Stout

Like, that's what happens here.

So he's taken back to the West Indies.

He endures the nightmare trip down the Middle Passage a second time, which is just an unthinkable hell to have to do twice.

He writes of seeing white members of the crew gratify their brutal passion with females not 10 years old on the journey.

In other words, they're just raping any –

The female that is on the boat, right?

They don't care about age, you know?

Like, that's the kind of men who are doing this, right?

Yeah.

Once he arrives in the Caribbean, he is horrified that he will be sold to a plantation and into a life of, quote, bondage, misery, stripes, and chains.

But here again, he meets with this crazy good luck.

It's this weird situation where he's in like this horror, the worst, least lucky situation he could be in.

But within that situation, he has crazy luck.

Like, I don't know how else to describe it.

Because it's like one in 10 million, right?

Like this happened to millions and millions of people.

One of them had this unique set of circumstances and was uniquely intelligent to be able to take advantage of it in the way that he was.

Right.

Take advantage is the wrong word, but like.

Yeah, but like even people who would have been as smart but maybe aren't good with languages probably wouldn't have had the success he has, right?