666 CONSOLATIONS OF RELIGION.

of our ship and cargo, which was worth four or five thousand
pounds, put all together.

These things tormented me, and my partner too, night and day;
nor did we consider that the captains of ships have no authority to
act thus; and if we had surrendered prisoners to them, they could
not answer the destroying us, or torturing us, but would be
accountable for it when they came into their own country: this, I
say, gave me no satisfaction; for if they will act thus with us,
what advantage would it be to us that they would be called to an
account for it? or if we were first to be murdered, what satisfac-
tion would it be to us to have them punished when they came
home?

T cannot refrain taking notice here what reflections I now had
upon the past variety of my particular circumstances; how hard
I thought it was that I, who had spent forty years in a life of
continued difliculties, and was at last come, as it were, to the port
or haven which all men drive at, namely, to have rest and plenty,
should be a volunteer in new sorrows by my own unhappy choice;
and that I, who escaped so many dangers in my youth, should now
come to be hanged in my old age, and in so remote a place, for a
crime I was not in the least inclined to, much less really guilty
of, and in a place and cireumstance where innocence was not like
to be any protection at all to me.

After these thoughts, something of religion would come in; and
I would be considering that this seemed to me to be a disposition
of immediate Providence, and I ought to look upon it, and submit
to it as such; that although [ was innocent as to men, I was far
from being innocent as to my Maker; and I ought to look in and
examine what other crimes in my life were more obvious to me,
and for which Providence might justly inflict this punishment as
a retribution; and that I ought to submit to this, just as I would
to a shipwreck, if it had pleased God to have brought such a dis-
aster upon me.

In its turn, natural courage would sometimes take its place,
and then I would be talking myself up to vigorous resolutions,
that I would not be taken, to be barbarously used, by a parcel of
merciless wretches, in cold blood: that it were much better to have