OF ROBINSON CRUSOE. 51

 

 

ness, At this surprising change of my circumstances, from a merchant
to a miserable slave, I was perfectly overwhelmed; and now I looked
back upon my father’s prophetic discourse to me, that I shoujd be
miserable, and have none to relieve me; which I thought was now so
effectually brought to pass, that I could not be worse; that now the
hand of Heaven had overtaken me, and I was undone without redemp-
tion. But, alas! this was but a taste of the misery I was to go through,
as will appear in the sequel of this story.

As my new patron or master had taken me home to his house, so I
was in hopes that he would take me with him when he went to sea
again, believing that it would be some time or other his fate to be taken
by a Spanish or Portugal man-of-war; and that then I should be set
at liberty. But this hope of mine was soon taken away; for when he
went to sea, he left me on shore to look after his little garden, and do
the common drudgery of slaves about his house; and when he came
home again from his cruize, he ordered me to lie in the cabin, to look
after the ship.

Ilere I meditated nothing but my escape, and what method I sip
take to affect it; but found no way that had the least probability in it.
Nothing presented to make the supposition of it rational; for I had
nobody to communicate it to that would embark with me,—no fellow-
slave, no Englishman, Irishman, or Scotchman there, but myself; so
that for two years, though I often pleased myself with the imagination,
yet I never had the least encouraging prospect of putting it in practice.

After about two years, an odd circumstance presented itself, which
put the old thought of making some attempt for my liberty again in my
head: my patron lying at home longer than usual, without fitting out
his ship, which, as I heard, was for want of money, he used constantly,
once or twice a-week, sometimes oftener, if the weather was fair, to
take the ship’s pinnace, and go out into the road a-fishing ; and as he
always took me and a young Moresco with him to row the boat, we
made him very merry, and I proved very dexterous in catching fish ;
insomuch, that sometimes he would send me with a Moor, one of his
kinsmen, and the youth, the Moresco, as they called him, to catch a
ash of fish for him.

It happened one time, that going a-fishing with him in a calm morn-
ing, a fog rose so thick, that though we were not half a league from the
shore, we lost sight of it; and, rowing we knew not whither, or which
way, we laboured all day, and all the next night; and, when the morn- .
mg came, we found we had pulled off to sea, instead of pulling in for
the bona and that we were at least two leagues from the land: how-
ever, we got well in again, though with a great deal of labour, and