Chapter 3

This put my mother into a great passion. She told me, she knew it would
be to no purpose to speak to my father upon any such subject; that he
knew too well what was my interest to give his consent to anything so
much for my hurt, and that she wondered how I could think of any such
thing after such a discourse as I had had with my father, and such kind
and tender expressions as she knew my father had used to me; and that,
in short, if I would ruin myself there was no help for me; but I might
depend I should never have their consent to it; that for her part, she
would not have so much hand in my destruction, and I should never have
it to say that my mother was willing when my father was not.

Though my mother refused to move it to my father, yet, as I have heard
afterwards, she reported all the discourse to him, and that my father,
after showing a great concern at it, said to her with a sigh, “That boy
might be happy if he would stay at home, but if he goes abroad he will
be the miserablest wretch that was ever born: I can give no consent to
it.”

It was not till almost a year after this that I broke loose, though in
the meantime I continued obstinately deaf to all proposals of settling
to business, and frequently expostulating with my father and mother
about their being so positively determined against what they knew my
inclinations prompted me to. But being one day at Hull, where I went
casually, and without any purpose of making an elopement that time; but
I say, being there, and one of my companions being going by sea to
London, in his father’s ship, and prompting me to go with them, with the
common allurement of seafaring men, viz., that it should cost me nothing
for my passage, I consulted neither father nor mother any more, nor so
much as sent them word of it; but leaving them to hear of it as they
might, without asking God’s blessing, or my father’s, without any
consideration of circumstances or consequences, and in an ill hour, God
knows, on the first of September, 1651, I went on board a ship bound for
London. Never any young adventurer’s misfortunes, I believe, began
sooner, or continued longer than mine. The ship was no sooner gotten out
of the Humber, but the wind began to blow, and the waves to rise in a
most frightful manner; and as I had never been at sea before, I was most
inexpressibly sick in body, and terrified in my mind. I began now
seriously to reflect upon what I had done, and how justly I was
overtaken by the judgment of heaven for my wicked leaving my father’s
house, and abandoning my duty; all the good counsel of my parents, my
father’s tears and my mother’s entreaties, came now fresh into my
mind, and my conscience, which was not yet come to the pitch of hardness
which it has been since, reproached me with the contempt of advice, and
the breach of my duty to God and my father.

[Illustration: “We were obliged to yield, and were carried all prisoners
into Sallee.” (See p. 29.)]

All this while the storm increased, and the sea, which I had never been
upon before, went very high, though nothing like what I have seen many
times since; no, nor like what I saw a few days after. But it was enough
to affect me then, who was but a young sailor, and had never known
anything of the matter. I expected every wave would have swallowed us
up, and that every time the ship fell down, as I thought, in the trough
or hollow of the sea, we should never rise more; and in this agony of
mind I made many vows and resolutions, that if it would please God here
to spare my life this one voyage, if ever I got once my foot upon dry
land again, I would go directly home to my father, and never set it into
a ship again while I lived; that I would take his advice, and never run
myself into such miseries as these any more. Now I saw plainly the
goodness of his observations about the middle station of life, how easy,
how comfortably he had lived all his days, and never had been exposed to
tempests at sea, or troubles on shore; and I resolved that I would, like
a true repenting prodigal, go home to my father.

These wise and sober thoughts continued all the while the storm
continued, and indeed some time after; but the next day the wind was
abated and the sea calmer, and I began to be a little inured to it.
However, I was very grave for all that day, being also a little sea-sick
still; but towards night the weather cleared up, the wind was quite
over, and a charming fine evening followed; the sun went down perfectly
clear, and rose so the next morning; and having little or no wind, and a
smooth sea, the sun shining upon it, the sight was, as I thought, the
most delightful that ever I saw.

I had slept well in the night, and was now no more sea-sick but very
cheerful, looking with wonder upon the sea that was so rough and
terrible the day before, and could be so calm and so pleasant in so
little time after. And now lest my good resolutions should continue,
my companion, who had indeed enticed me away, comes to me: “Well,
Bob,” says he, clapping me on the shoulder, “how do you do after it? I
warrant you were frighted, wa’n’t you, last night, when it blew but a
capful of wind?” “A capful, d’you call it?” said I; “’twas a terrible
storm.” “A storm, you fool you,” replies he; “do you call that a
storm? Why, it was nothing at all; give us but a good ship and
sea-room, and we think nothing of such a squall of wind as that; but
you’re but a fresh-water sailor, Bob. Come, let us make a bowl of
punch, and we’ll forget all that; d’ye see what charming weather ’tis
now?” To make short this sad part of my story, we went the old way of
all sailors; the punch was made, and I was made drunk with it, and in
that one night’s wickedness I drowned all my repentance, all my
reflections upon my past conduct, and all my resolutions for my
future. In a word, as the sea was returned to its smoothness of
surface and settled calmness by the abatement of that storm, so the
hurry of my thoughts being over, my fears and apprehensions of being
swallowed up by the sea being forgotten, and the current of my former
desires returned, I entirely forgot the vows and promises that I made
in my distress. I found indeed some intervals of reflection, and the
serious thoughts did, as it were, endeavour to return again sometimes;
but I shook them off, and roused myself from them as it were from a
distemper, and applying myself to drink and company, soon mastered the
return of those fits, for so I called them, and I had in five or six
days got as complete a victory over conscience as any young fellow
that resolved not to be troubled with it could desire. But I was to
have another trial for it still; and Providence, as in such cases
generally it does, resolved to leave me entirely without excuse. For
if I would not take this for a deliverance, the next was to be such a
one as the worst and most hardened wretch among us would confess both
the danger and the mercy.