the least room to do anything
towards it. In short, there was no retreat, no shifting anything off, no
avoiding or preventing her having a full sight of me, nor was there any
counterfeiting my voice, for then my husband would have perceived it. In
short, there was not the least circumstance that offered me any
assistance, or any favourable thing to help me in this exigence.

After I had been upon the rack for near half-an-hour, during which I
appeared stiff and reserved, and a little too formal, my spouse and the
captain fell into discourses about the ship and the sea, and business
remote from us women; and by-and-by the captain carried him out upon the
quarter-deck, and left us all by ourselves in the great cabin. Then we
began to be a little freer one with another, and I began to be a little
revived by a sudden fancy of my own--namely, I thought I perceived that
the girl did not know me, and the chief reason of my having such a
notion was because I did not perceive the least disorder in her
countenance, or the least change in her carriage, no confusion, no
hesitation in her discourse; nor, which I had my eye particularly upon,
did I observe that she fixed her eyes much upon me, that is to say, not
singling me out to look steadily at me, as I thought would have been the
case, but that she rather singled out my friend the Quaker, and chatted
with her on several things; but I observed, too, that it was all about
indifferent matters.

This greatly encouraged me, and I began to be a little cheerful; but I
was knocked down again as with a thunderclap, when turning to the
captain's wife, and discoursing of me, she said to her, "Sister, I
cannot but think my lady to be very much like such a person." Then she
named the person, and the captain's wife said she thought so too. The
girl replied again, she was sure she had seen me before, but she could
not recollect where; I answered (though her speech was not directed to
me) that I fancied she had not seen me before in England, but asked if
she had lived in Holland. She said, No, no, she had never been out of
England, and I added, that she could not then have known me in England,
unless it was very lately, for I had lived at Rotterdam a great while.
This carried me out of that part of the broil pretty well, and to make
it go off better, when a little Dutch boy came into the cabin, who
belonged to the captain, and who I easily perceived to be Dutch, I
jested and talked Dutch to hi