HIS VARIOUS ADVENTURES. 465

times shipped and unshipped, and never to go to the place whither
any of the ships he was in were at first designed! That his first
intent was to have gone to Martinique, and that he went on board
a ship bound thither at St. Malo, but being forced into Lisbon by
bad weather, the ship received some damage by running aground
in the mouth of the river Tagus, and was obliged to unload her
cargo there: that finding a Portuguese ship there bound to the
Madeiras, and ready to sail, and supposing he should easily meet
with a vessel there bound to Martinique, he went on board in order
to sail to the Madeiras; but the master of the Portuguese ship
being but an indifferent mariner, had been out in his reckoning,
and they drove to Fial, where, however, he happened to find a very
good market for his cargo, which was corn, and therefore resolved
not to go to the Madeiras, but to load salt at the Isle of May, and
go away to Newfoundland. He had no remedy in this exigence
but to go with the ship, and had a pretty good voyage as far as
the Banks (so they call the place where they catch the fish),
where, meeting with a French ship bound from France to Quebec
in the river of Canada and from thence to Martinique, to carry pro-
visions, he thought he should have an opportunity to complete his
first design ; but when he came to Quebec the master of the ship
died, and the ship proceeded no further: so the next voyage he
shipped himself for France in the ship that was burned when we
took them up at sea, and then shipped with us for the Hast Indies,
as I have already said. Thus he had been disappointed in five
voyages, all, as I may call it, in one voyage, besides what I shall
have occasion to mention further of the same person.

But I shall not make digressions into other men’s stories which
have no relation to my own. I return to what concerns our affair
in the island. He came to me one morning, for he lodged among
us all the while we were upon the island, and it happened to be
just when I was going to visit the Englishmen’s colony at the fur-
thest part of the island; I say, he came to me, and told me, with
a very grave countenance, that he had for two or three days desired
an opportunity of some discourse with me, which he hoped would
not be displeasing to me, because he thought it might in some
measure correspond with my general design, which was the pros-