he tobacco being green and strong, and such
as I had not been much used to. Then I took some and steeped it an hour
or two in some rum, and resolved to take a dose of it when I lay down:
and, lastly, I burnt some upon a pan of coals, and held my nose close
over the smoke of it as long as I could bear it; as well for the heat,
as almost for suffocation. In the interval of this operation, I took up
the Bible, and began to read; but my head was too much disturbed with
the tobacco to bear reading, at least at that time; only, having opened
the book casually, the first words that occurred to me were these: "Call
on me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver thee, and thou shalt
glorify me." These words were very apt to my case; and made some
impression upon my thoughts at the time of reading them, though not so
much as they did afterwards; for, as for being _delivered_, the word had
no sound, as I may say, to me; the thing was so remote, so impossible in
my apprehension of things, that, as the children of Israel said when
they were promised flesh to eat, "Can God spread a table in the
wilderness?" so I began to say, Can even God himself deliver me from
this place? And as it was not for many years that any hopes appeared,
this prevailed very often upon my thoughts: but, however, the words made
a great impression upon me, and I mused upon them very often. It now
grew late; and the tobacco had, as I said, dozed my head so much, that I
inclined to sleep: so I left my lamp burning in the cave, lest I should
want any thing in the night, and went to bed. But before I lay down, I
did what I never had done in all my life; I kneeled down, and prayed to
God to fulfil the promise to me, that if I called upon him in the day of
trouble, he would deliver me. After my broken and imperfect prayer was
over, I drank the rum in which I had steeped the tobacco; which was so
strong and rank of the tobacco, that indeed I could scarce get it down:
immediately upon this I went to bed. I found presently the rum flew up
into my head violently; but I fell into a sound sleep, and waked no
more till, by the sun, it must necessarily be near three o'clock in the
afternoon the next day: nay, to this hour I am partly of opinion, that I
slept all the next day and night, and till almost three the day after;
for otherwise, I know not how I should lose a day out of my reckoning in
the days of the week, as it appeared some years after I had done; for if
I had los