A SHIP ON FIRE, 373

bad weather happened on this first setting out, which niade the
voyage longer than I expected it at first: and I, who had never made
but one voyage (namely, my first voyage to Guinea) in which I
might be said to come back again as the voyage was at first
designed, began to think the same ill fate still attended me, and
that I was born never to be contented with being on shore, and yet
to be always unfortunate at sea.

Contrary winds first put us to the northward, and we were
obliged to put in at Galway in Ireland, where we lay wind-bound
two and twenty days. But we had this satisfaction with the dis-
aster, that provisions were here exceeding cheap, and in the utmost
plenty; so that while we lay here we never touched the ship’s
stores, but rather added to them; also I took in several live hogs,
and two cows, and calves, which I resolved, if I had a good
passage, to put on shore in my island; but we found occasion to
dispose otherwise of them.

We set out the 5th February from Ireland, and had a very fair
gale of wind for some days. As I remember, it might be about
the 20th of February, in the evening late, when the mate, having
the watch, came into the round-house and told us he saw a flash
of fire and heard a gun fired; and while he was telling us of it, a
boy came in and told us the boatswain heard another. This made
us all run out upon the quarter-deck, where, for a while, we heard
nothing; but in a few minutes we saw a very great light, and
found that there was some very terrible fire at a distance. Im-
mediately we had recourse to our reckonings, in which we all
agreed that there could be no land that way in which the fire
showed itself, no, not for five hundred leagues, for it appeared at
west-north-west. Upon this we concluded it must be some ship
on fire at, sea; and as, by our hearing the noise of guns just before,
we concluded it could not be far off, we stood directly towards it,
and were presently satisfied we should discover it, because the
further we sailed the greater the light appeared, though the weather
being hazy, we could not perceive anything but the light for a while.
In about half an hour’s sailing, the wind being fair for us, though
not much of it, and the weather clearing up a little, we could plainly
discern that it was a great ship on-fire in the middle of the sea.