sufficient provisions to make me live much better than the other people in the ship; for the captain seldom ordered anything out of the ship's stores, as above, but I snipt some of it for my own share. We arrived at Goa, in the East Indies, in about seven months, from Lisbon, and remained there eight more; during which time, I had indeed nothing to do, my master being generally on shore, but to learn everything that is wicked among the Portuguese, a nation the most perfidious and the most debauched, the most insolent and cruel, of any that pretend to call themselves Christians, in the world.

Thieving, lying, swearing, forswearing, joined to the most abominable lewdness, was the stated practice of the ship's crew; adding to it, that, with the most unsufferable boasts of their own courage, they were, generally speaking, the most complete cowards that I ever met with; and the consequence of their cowardice was evident upon many occasions. However, there was here and there one among them that was not so bad as the rest; and, as my lot fell among them, it made me have the most contemptible thoughts of the rest, as indeed they deserved.

I was exactly fitted for their society indeed; for I had no sense of virtue or religion upon me. I had never heard much of either, except what a good old parson had said to me when I was a child of about eight or nine years old; nay, I was preparing, and growing up apace, to be as wicked as any body could be, or perhaps ever was. Fate certainly thus directed my beginning, knowing that I had work to do in the world, which nothing but one hardened against all sense of honesty or religion, could go through; and yet, even in this state of original wickedness, I entertained such a settled abhorrence of the abandoned vileness of the Portuguese, that I could not but hate them most heartily from the beginning, and all my life afterwards. They were so brutishly wicked, so base and perfidious, not only to strangers, but to one another; so meanly submissive when subjected; so insolent, or barbarous and tyrannical, when superior, that I thought there was something in them that shocked my very nature. Add to this, that it is natural to an Englishman to hate a coward, it all joined together to make the devil and a Portuguese equally my aversion.

However, according to the English proverb, "He that is

CARRIED INTO THE INQUISITION.

7

shipped with the devil must sail with the devil;" I was among them, and I managed myself as well as I could. My master had consented that I should assist the captain in the office, as above; but, as I understood afterwards, that the captain allowed my master half a moidore a month for my service, and that he had my name upon the ship's books also, I expected that, when the ship came to be paid four months' wages at the Indies, as they, it seems, always do, my master would let me have something for myself.

But I was wrong in my man, for he was none of that kind: he had taken me up as in distress, and his business was to keep me so, and make his market of me as well as he could; which I began to think of after a different manner than I did at first; for at first I thought he had entertained me in mere charity, upon seeing my distressed circumstances, but did not doubt, but when he put me on board the ship, I should have some wages for my service.

But he thought, it seems, quite otherwise; and, when I procured one to speak to him about it, when the ship was paid at Goa, he flew into the greatest rage imaginable, and called me English dog, young heretic, and threatened to put me into the inquisition. Indeed, of all the names the four and twenty letters could make up, he should not have called me heretic; for, as I knew nothing about religion, neither protestant from papist, or either of them from a Mahometan, I could never be a heretic. However, it passed but a little, but, as young as I was, I had been carried into the inquisition; and, there, if they had asked me if I was a protestant or a catholic, I should have said yes to that which came first. If it had been the protestant they had asked first, it had certainly made a martyr of me for I did not know what.

But the very priest they carried with them, or chaplain of the ship, as we call him, saved me: for, seeing me a boy entirely ignorant of religion, and ready to do or say anything they bid me, he asked me some questions about it, which he found I answered so very simply, that he took it upon him to tell them, he would answer for my being a good catholic; and he hoped he should be the means of saving my soul; and he pleased himself that it was to be a work of merit to him; so he made me as good a papist as any of them in about a week's time.

I then told him my case about my master; how, it is true,

he had taken me up in a miserable case, on board a man-ofwar, at Lisbon; and I was indebted to him for bringing me on board this ship; that, if I had been left at Lisbon, I might have starved and the like; and therefore I was willing to serve him; but that I hoped he would give me some little consideration for my service, or let me know how long he expected I should serve him for nothing.

It was all one; neither the priest or any one else could prevail with him, but that I was not his servant but his slave; that he took me in the Algerine; and that I was a Turk; only pretended to be an English boy, to get my liberty; and he would carry me to the inquisition as a Turk.

This frightened me out of my wits; for I had nobody to vouch for me what I was, or from whence I came; but the good Padre Antonio, for that was his name, cleared me of that part by a way I did not understand: for he came to me one morning with two sailors, and told me they must search me, to bear witness that I was not a Turk. I was amazed at them, and frightened; and did not understand them; nor could I imagine what they intended to do to me. However, stripping me, they were soon satisfied; and father Anthony bade me be easy, for they could all witness that I was no Turk. So I escaped that part of my master's cruelty.

And now I resolved from that time to run away from him if I could; but there was no doing of it there; for there were not ships of any nation in the world, in that port, except two or three Persian vessels from Ormus; so that, if I had offered to go away from him, he would have had me seized on shore, and brought on board by force: so that I had no remedy but patience, and this he brought to an end too as soon as he could; for after this he began to use me ill, and not only to straiten my provisions, but to beat and torture me in a barbarous manner for every trifle; so that, in a word, my life began to be very miserable.

The violence of this usage of me, and the impossibility of my escape from his hands, set my head a working upon all sorts of mischief; and, in particular, I resolved, after studying all other ways to deliver myself, and finding all ineffectual, I say, I resolved to murder him. With this hellish resolution in my head, I spent whole nights and days contriving how to put it in execution, the devil prompting me very warmly to the fact. I was indeed en

CONCERNED IN A MUTINY.

tirely at a loss for the means; for I had neither gun or sword, nor any weapon to assault him with. Poison I had my thoughts much upon, but knew not where to get any; or, if I might have got it, I did not know the country word for it, or by what name to ask for it.

In this manner I was guilty of the fact intentionally a hundred and a hundred times; but Providence, either for his sake or for mine, always frustrated my designs, and I could never bring it to pass: so I was obliged to continue in his chains till the ship, having taken in her loading, set sail for Portugal.

I can say nothing here to the manner of our voyage; for, as I said, I kept no journal; but this I can give an account of, that, having been once as high as the Cape of Good Hope, as we call it, or Cabo de Bona Speranza, as they call it, we were driven back again by a violent storm from the W.S.W., which held us, six days and nights, a great way to the eastward; and after that running afore the wind for several days more, we at last came to an anchor on the coast of Madagascar.

The storm had been so violent that the ship had received a great deal of damage, and it required some time to repair her; so, standing in nearer the shore, the pilot, my master, brought the ship into a very good road, where we rid in twenty-six fathom water, about half-a-mile from the shore.

While the ship rode here, there happened a most desperate mutiny among the men, upon account of some deficiency in their allowance, which came to that height that they threatened the captain to set him on shore, and go back with the ship to Goa. I wished they would with all my heart, for I was full of mischief in my head, and ready enough to do any. So, though I was but a boy, as they called me, yet I prompted the mischief all I could, and embarked in it so openly that I escaped very little being hanged in the first and most early part of my life; for the captain had some notice that there was a design laid by some of the company to murder him; and having, partly by money and promises, and partly by threatening and torture, brought two fellows to confess the particulars and the names of the persons concerned, they were presently apprehended, till, one accusing another, no less than sixteen men were seized and put into irons, whereof I was one.

The captain, who was made desperate by his danger, resolving to clear the ship of his enemies, tried us all, and we were all condemned to die. The manner of his process I was too young to take notice of; but the purser and one of the gunners were hanged immediately, and I expected it with the rest.. I do not remember any great concern I was under about it, only that I cried very much; for I knew little then of this world, and nothing at all of the next.

However, the captain contented himself with executing these two; and some of the rest, upon their humble submission, and promise of future good behaviour, were pardoned; but five were ordered to be set on shore on the island, and left there, of which I was one. My master used all his interest with the captain to have me excused, but could not obtain it; for somebody having told him that I was one of them who was singled out to have killed him, when my master desired I might not be set on shore, the captain told him I should stay on board if he desired it, but then I should be hanged; so he might choose for me which he thought best. The captain, it seems, was particularly provoked at my being concerned in the treachery, because of his having been so kind to me, and of his having singled me out to serve him, as I have said above; and this perhaps obliged him to give my master such a rough choice, either to set me on shore or to have me hanged on board; and had my master indeed known what good-will I had for him, he would not have been long in choosing for me; for I had certainly determined to do him a mischief the first opportunity I had for it. This was, therefore, a good providence for me, to keep me from dipping my hands in blood, and it made me more tender afterwards in matters of blood than I believe I should otherwise have been. But as to my being one of them that was to kill the captain, that I was wronged in, for I was not the person; but it was really one of them that were pardoned, he having the good luck not to have that part discovered.

I was now to enter upon a part of independent life,—a thing I was indeed very ill prepared to manage; for I was perfectly loose and dissolute in my behaviour, bold and wicked while I was under government, and now perfectly unfit to be trusted with liberty; for I was as ripe for any villany as a young fellow that had no solid thought ever