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 shalt 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 none 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 upward towards God, or inward
towards a reflection upon my own ways: but a certain stupidity of soul,
without desire of good, or consciousness 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 him, in deliverances.

In the relating what is already past of my story, this will be the more
easily believed, when I shall add, that through all the variety of
miseries that had to this day befallen me, I never had so much as one
thought of its being the hand of God, or that it was a just punishment
for my sin; either my rebellious behaviour against my father, or my
present sins, which were great; or even as a punishment for the general
course of my wicked life. When I was on the desperate expedition on the
desert shores of Africa, I never had so much as one thought of what
would become of me; or one wish to God to direct me whither I should go,
or to keep me from the danger which apparently surrounded me, as well
from voracious creatures as cruel savages: but I was quite thoughtless
of a God or a Providence; acted like a mere brute, from the principles
of nature, and by the dictates of common sense only; and indeed hardly
that. When I was delivered and taken up at sea by the Portuguese
captain, well