from the shore, and made so large a tack that before night, though
he seemed to advance but little on his way, he was got out of sight of
land.

Towards evening the wind began, in the captain's own language,
and indeed it freshened so much, that before ten it blew a perfect
hurricane. The captain having got, as he supposed, to a safe distance,
tacked again towards the English shore; and now the wind veered a point
only in his favor, and continued to blow with such violence, that the
ship ran above eight knots or miles an hour during this whole day and
tempestuous night till bed-time. I was obliged to betake myself
once more to my solitude, for my women were again all down in their
sea-sickness, and the captain was busy on deck; for he began to grow
uneasy, chiefly, I believe, because he did not well know where he
was, and would, I am convinced, have been very glad to have been in
Portland-road, eating some sheep's-head broth.

Having contracted no great degree of good-humor by living a whole day
alone, without a single soul to converse with, I took but ill physic to
purge it off, by a bed-conversation with the captain, who, amongst many
bitter lamentations of his fate, and protesting he had more patience
than a Job, frequently intermixed summons to the commanding officer on
the deck, who now happened to be one Morrison, a carpenter, the only
fellow that had either common sense or common civility in the ship. Of
Morrison he inquired every quarter of an hour concerning the state
of affairs: the wind, the care of the ship, and other matters of
navigation. The frequency of these summons, as well as the solicitude
with which they were made, sufficiently testified the state of the
captain's mind; he endeavored to conceal it, and would have given no
small alarm to a man who had either not learned what it is to die, or
known what it is to be miserable. And my dear wife and child must pardon
me, if what I did not conceive to be any great evil to myself I was not
much terrified with the thoughts of happening to them; in truth, I have
often thought they are both too good and too gentle to be trusted to the
power of any man I know, to whom they could possibly be so trusted.

Can I say then I had no fear? indeed I cannot. Reader, I was afraid for
thee, lest thou shouldst have been deprived of that pleasure thou art
now enjoying; and that I should not live to draw out on paper that
military character which thou didst peruse in the