The Nigger of the 'Narcissus'
A merchant ship makes the passage from Bombay to London with a crew held together by routine and a hand who signs on at the last moment, James Wait, a West Indian sailor who announces that he is dying and leaves the men to decide whether to believe him. A gale off the Cape lays the vessel on her side, and the sympathy the crew have been extending to the sick man turns into something that costs them. Its racial slur of a title was changed for the first American edition and is routinely replaced in print today, which is the form most readers now meet it in.
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