itation, I was forced to lie till morning, and went to sleep again.
In this second sleep I had this terrible dream.

I thought that I was sitting on the ground on the outside of my wall,
where I sat when the storm blew after the earthquake, and that I saw a
man descend from a great black cloud, in a bright flame of fire, and
light upon the ground. He was all over as bright as a flame, so that I
could but just bear to look towards him; his countenance was most
inexpressibly dreadful, impossible for words to describe; when he
stepped upon the ground with his feet I thought the earth trembled, just
as it had done before in the earthquake, and all the air looked to my
apprehension as if it had been filled with flashes of fire.

He was no sooner landed upon the earth, but he moved forward towards
me, with a long spear or weapon in his hand to kill me; and when he came
to a rising ground, at some distance, he spoke to me, or I heard a voice
so terrible, that it is impossible to express the terror of it; all that
I can say I understood was this, "Seeing all these things have not
brought thee to repentance, now thou shall die:" at which words I
thought he lifted up the spear that was in his hand to kill me.

No one, that shall ever read this account, will expect that I should be
able to describe the horrors of my soul at this terrible vision; I mean,
that even while it was a dream, I even dreamed of those horrors; nor is
it any more possible to describe the impression that remained upon my
mind, when I awaked, and found it was but a dream.

I had, alas! no divine knowledge; what I had received by the good
instruction of my father was then worn out by an uninterrupted series,
for eight years, of seafaring wickedness, and a constant conversation
with nothing but such as were, like myself, wicked and profane to the
last degree. I do not remember that I had in all that time one thought
that so much as tended either to looking upwards toward God, or inwards
towards a reflection upon my own ways. But a certain stupidity of soul,
without desire of good, or conscience of evil, had entirely overwhelmed
me, and I was all that the most hardened, unthinking, wicked creature
among our common sailors can be supposed to be, not having the least
sense, either of the fear of God in danger, or of thankfulness to God in
deliverances.

In the relating what is already past of my story, this will be the more
easily believed, when I shall add, th