the duty and office of a foremast-man, and in time might have qualified myself for a mate or lieutenant, if not a master: but as it was always my fate to choose for the worse, so I did here; for having money in my pocket, and good clothes upon my back, I would always go on board in the habit of a gentleman; and so I neither had any business in the ship, nor learned to do any. It was my lot, first of all, to fall into pretty good company in London; which does not always happen to such loose and misguided young fellows as I then was; the devil, generally, not omitting to lay some snare for them very early. But it was not so with me: I first feil acquainted with the master of a ship, who had been on the coast of Guinea, and who, having had very good success there, was resolved to go again. He, taking a fancy to my conversation, which was not at all disagreeable at that time, and hearing me say I had a mind to see the world, told me, that if I would go the voyage with him, I should be at no I should be his mess-mate and his companion; and if I could carry any-thing with me, I should have all the advantage of it that the trade would admit; and perhaps I might meet with some encouragement. I embraced the offer, and, entering into a strict friendship with this captain, who was an honest and plain-dealing man, I went the voyage with him, and carried a small adventure with me; which, by the disinterested honesty of my friend the captain, I increased very considerably; for I carried about 40/. in such toys and trifles as the captain directed me to buy. This 40l. I had mustered together by the assistance of some of my relations whom I corresponded with; and who, I believe, got my father, or, at least, my mother, to contribute so much as that to my first adventure. This was the only voyage which I may say was suc

expense;

cessful in all my adventures, and which I owe to the integrity and honesty of my friend the captain; under whom also I got a competent knowledge of the mathematics and the rules of navigation, learned how to keep an account of the ship's course, take an observation, and, in short, to understand some things that were needful to be understood by a sailor; for, as he took delight to instruct me, I took delight to learn; and, in a word, this voyage made me both a sailor and a merchant: for I brought home 5lb. 9oz. of gold-dust for my adventure, which yielded me in London, at my return, almost 300l. and this filled me with those aspiring thoughts which have since so completed my ruin. Yet even in this voyage I had my misfortunes too; particularly, that I was continually sick, being thrown into a violent calenture by the excessive heat of the climate; our principal trading being upon the coast, from the latitude of 15 degrees north, even to the Line itself.

I was now set up for a Guinea trader; and my friend, to my great misfortune, dying soon after his arrival, I resolved to go the same voyage again; and I embarked in the same vessel with one who was his mate in the former voyage, and had now got the command of the ship. This was the unhappiest voyage that ever man made; for though I did not carry quite 100% of my new-gained wealth, so that had 2001. left, and which I lodged with my friend's widow, who was very just to me, yet I fell into terrible misfortunes in this voyage: and the first was this, viz.―our ship, making her course towards the Canary Islands, or rather between those islands and the African shore, was surprised, in the grey of the morning, by a Turkish rover, of Sallee, who gave chase to us with all the sail she could make. We crowded also as much canvas as our yards would

spread, or our masts carry, to get clear; but finding the pirate gained upon us, and would certainly come up with us in a few hours, we prepared to fight, our ship having 12 guns, and the rover 18. About three in the afternoon he came up with us; and bringing to, by mistake, just athwart our quarter, instead of athwart our stern, as he intended, we brought eight of our guns to bear on that side, and poured in a broadside upon him, which made him sheer off again, after returning our fire, and pouring in also his small shot from near 200 men which he had on board. However, we had not a man touched, all our men keeping close. He prepared to attack us again, and we to defend ourselves; but laying us on board the next time upon our other quarter, he entered 60 men upon our decks, who immediately fell to cutting and hacking the sails and rigging. We plied them with small shot, half-pikes, powderchests, and such like, and cleared our deck of them twice. However, to cut short this melancholy part of our story, our ship being disabled, and three of our men killed and eight wounded, we were obliged to yield, and were carried all prisoners into Sallee, a port belonging to the Moors.

The usage I had there was not so dreadful as at first I apprehended; nor was I carried up the country to the emperor's court, as the rest of our men were, but was kept by the captain of the rover as his proper prize, and made his slave, being young and nimble, and fit for his business. At this sur

prising change of my circumstances, from a merchant to a miserable slave, I was perfectly overwhelmed; and now I looked back upon my father's prophetic discourse to me, that I should be miserable, and have none to relieve me; which I thought was now so effectually brought to pass, that it could not be worse; that now the hand of Heaven had

overtaken me, and I was undone, without redemption. But, alas! this was but a taste of the misery I was to go through, as will appear in the sequel of this story.

As my new patron, or master, had taken me home to his house, so I was in hopes he would take me with him when he went to sea again, believing that it would, some time or other, be his fate to be taken by a Spanish or Portuguese man of war, and that then I should be set at liberty. But this hope of mine was soon taken away; for when he went to sea, he left me on shore, to look after his little garden, and do the common drudgery of slaves about his house; and when he came home again from his cruise, he ordered me to lie in the cabin, to look after the ship.

Here I meditated nothing but my escape, and what method I might take to effect it, but found no way that had the least probability in it. Nothing presented to make the supposition of it rational for I had nobody to communicate it to that would embark with me; no fellow-slave, no Englishman, Irishman, or Scotchman there but myself; so that for two years, though I often pleased myself with the imagination, yet I never had the least encouraging prospect of putting it in practice.

After about two years, an odd circumstance presented itself, which put the old thought of making some attempt for my liberty again in my head. My patron lying at home longer than usual, without fitting out his ship, which, as I heard, was for want of money, he used constantly, once or twice a week, sometimes oftener, if the weather was fair, to take the ship's pinnace, and go out into the road a-fishing; and as he always took me and a young Moresco with him to row the boat, we made him very merry, and I proved very dexterous in catching fish, inso

much that sometimes he would send me with a Moor, one of his kinsmen, and the youth, the Moresco, as they called him, to catch a dish of fish for him.

It happened one time, that going a-fishing in a stark calm morning, a fog rose so thick, that though we were not half a league from the shore, we lost sight of it; and rowing, we knew not whither, or which way, we laboured all day and all the next night, and when the morning came, we found we had pulled off to sea, instead of pulling in for the shore, and that we were at least two leagues from the shore: however, we got well in again, though with a great deal of labour, and some danger, for the wind began to blow pretty fresh in the morning; but particularly we were all very hungry.

But our patron, warned by this disaster, resolved to take more care of himself for the future; and having lying by him the long-boat of our English ship he had taken, he resolved he would not go a-fishing any more without a compass and some provision; so he ordered the carpenter of the ship, who was an English slave, to build a little stateroom or cabin in the middle of the long-boat, like that of a barge, with a place to stand behind it, to steer and haul home the main sheet, and room before for a hand or two to stand and work the sails. She sailed with what we call a shoulder-of-mutton sail, and the boom jibbed over the top of the cabin, which lay very snug and low, and had in it room for him to lie, with a slave or two, and a table to eat on, with some small lockers to put in some bottles of such liquor as he thought fit to drink, and particularly his bread, rice, and coffee.

We went frequently out with this boat a-fishing, and as I was most dexterous to catch fish for him, he never went without me. It happened, that he