wanted for his ship, to leave behind if there was occasion; that, when we came there, we might build a fort, and man it against all sorts of enemies; and, indeed, I at first thought there would be need enough for all, and much more, if we hoped to maintain our possession of the island; as shall be seen in the course of that story.

I had not such bad luck in this voyage as I had been used to meet with; and therefore shall have the less occasion to interrupt the reader, who perhaps may be impatient to hear how matters went with my colony: yet some odd accidents, cross winds, and bad weather, happened on this first setting out, which made the voyage longer than I expected it at first: and I, who had never made but one voyage, viz. 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 attended me; and that I was born to be never 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 windbound two-and-twenty days; but we had this satisfaction with the disaster, 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. Here, also, I took in several live hogs, and two cows, with their 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.

HAD CAUGHT FIRE.

We set out on the 5th of 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: immediately 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 W.N.W. 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 that it could not be far off, we stood directly towards it, and were presently satisfied we should discover it, because, the farther 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.

I was most sensibly touched with this disaster, though not at all acquainted with the persons engaged in it: I presently recollected my former circumstances, and in what condition I was in, when taken up by the Portuguese captain; and how much more deplorable the circumstances of the poor creatures belonging to that ship must be, if they had no other ship in company with them. Upon this, I immediately ordered that five guns should be fired, one soon after another; that, if possible, we might give notice to them that there was help for them at hand, and that they might endeavour to save themselves in their boat; for though we could see the flames of the ship, yet they, it being night, could see nothing of us.

We lay by some time upon this, only driving as the burning ship drove, waiting for daylight; when, on a sudden, to our great terror, though we had reason to expect it, the ship blew up in the air; and immediately, that is to say, in a few minutes, all the fire was out, that is to say, the rest of the ship sunk. This was a terrible and indeed an afflicting sight for the sake of the poor men; who, I concluded, must be either all destroyed in the ship, or be in the utmost distress in their boat, in the middle of the ocean; which, at present, by reason it was dark, I could not see. However, to direct them as well as I could, I caused lights to be hung out in all the parts of the ship where we could, and which we had lanterns for, and kept firing guns all the night long; letting them know, by this, that there was a ship not far off.

About eight o'clock in the morning we discovered the ship's boats by the help of our perspective glasses; found there were two of them, both thronged with people, and deep in the water. We perceived they rowed, the wind being against them; that they saw our ship, and did their utmost to make us see them.

We immediately spread our ancient, to let them know we saw them, and hung a waft out, as a signal for them to come on board; and then made more sail, standing directly to them. In little more than half an hour we came up with them; and, in a word, took them all in, being no less than sixty-four men, women, and children; for there were a great many passengers.

Upon the whole, we found it was a French merchant-ship of three hundred tons, home-bound from Quebec, in the river of Canada. The master gave us a long account of the distress of his ship; how the fire began in the steerage, by the negligence of the steersman; but on his crying out for help, was, as every body thought, entirely put out; but they soon found that some sparks of the first fire had gotten into some part of the ship so difficult to come at, that they could not effectually quench it; and afterwards getting in between the timbers, and within the ceiling of the ship, it proceeded into the hold, and mastered all the skill and all the application they were able to exert.

They had no more to do then, but to get into their boats,

which, to their great comfort, were pretty large; being their long-boat, and a great shallop, besides a small skiff, which was of no great service to them, other than to get some fresh water and provisions into her, after they had secured their lives from the fire. They had, indeed, small hope of their lives by getting into these boats, at that distance from any land; only, as they said well, that they were escaped from the fire, and a possibility that some ship might happen to be at sea, and might take them in. They had sails, oars, and a compass; and were preparing to make the best of their way back to Newfoundland, the wind blowing pretty fair, for it blew an easy gale at S. E. by E. They had as much provision and water as, with sparing it so as to be next door to starving, might support them about twelve days; in which, if they had no bad weather, and no contrary winds, the captain said he hoped he might get to the Banks of Newfoundland, and might perhaps take some fish, to sustain them till they might go on shore. But there were so many chances against them in all these cases, such as storms, to overset and founder them; rains and cold, to benumb and perish their limbs; contrary winds, to keep them out and starve them; that it must have been next to miraculous if they had escaped.

In the midst of their consternation, every one being hopeless and ready to despair, the captain, with tears in his eyes, told me they were on a sudden surprised with the joy of hearing a gun fire, and after that four more; these were the five guns which I caused to be fired at first seeing the light. This revived their hearts, and gave them the notice, which, as above, I desired it should, viz. that there was a ship at hand for their help. It was upon the hearing of these guns that they took down their masts and sails: the sound coming from the windward, they resolved to lie by till morning. Some time after this, hearing no more guns, they fired three muskets, one a considerable while after another; but these, the wind being contrary, we never heard.

Some time after that again, they were still more agreeably surprised with seeing our lights, and hearing the guns which, as I have said, I caused to be fired all the rest of the night: this set them to work with their oars, to keep their boats ahead, at least, that we might the sooner come up with them; and, at last, to their inexpressible joy, they found we saw them.

It is impossible for me to express the several gestures, the strange ecstasies, the variety of postures, which these poor delivered people ran into, to express the joy of their souls at so unexpected a deliverance. Grief and fear are easily described; sighs, tears, groans, and a very few motions of the head and hands, make up the sum of its variety; but an excess of joy, a surprise of joy, has a thousand extravagances in it: there were some in tears; some raging and tearing themselves, as if they had been in the greatest agonies of sorrow; some stark raving, and downright lunatic; some ran about the ship stamping with their feet, others wringing their hands; some were dancing, some singing, some laughing, more crying; many quite dumb, not able to speak a word; others sick and vomiting: several swooning, and ready to faint; and a few were crossing themselves, and giving God thanks.

I would not wrong them neither; there might be many that were thankful afterwards, but the passion was too strong for them at first, and they were not able to master it: they were thrown into ecstasies, and a kind of frenzy; and it was but a very few that were composed and serious in their joy.

Perhaps, also, the case may have some addition to it from the particular circumstance of that nation they belonged to: I mean the French, whose temper is allowed to be more volatile, more passionate, and more sprightly, and their spirits more fluid, than in other nations. I am not philosopher enough to determine the cause; but nothing I had ever seen before came up to it. The ecstasies poor Friday, my trusty savage, was in, when he found his father in the boat, came the nearest to it; and the surprise of the master and his two companions, whom I delivered from the villains that set them on shore in the island, came a little way towards it; but nothing was to compare to this, either that I saw in Friday, or any where else in my life.

It is further observable, that these extravagances did not show themselves, in that different manner I have mentioned, in different persons only; but all the variety would appear, in a short succession of moments, in one and the same person. A man that we saw this minute dumb, and as it were stupid and confounded, would the next minute be dancing and hallooing like an antic; and the next moment be tearing his hair, or pulling his clothes to pieces, and stamping them under his feet, like a madman; in a few moments after that, we would have him all in tears, then sick, swooning, and, had not immediate help been had, he would in a few moments have been dead; and thus it was, not with one or two, or ten or twenty, but with the greatest part of them: and if I remember right, our surgeon was obliged to let blood of about thirty of them.

There were two priests among them, one an old man, and the other a young man; and that which was strangest was, the oldest man was the worst. As soon as he set his foot on board our ship, and saw himself safe, he dropped down stone-dead, to all appearance; not the least sign of life could be perceived in him: our surgeon immediately applied proper remedies to recover him, and was the only man in the ship that believed he was not dead. At length he opened a vein in his arm, having first chafed and rubbed the part, so as to warm it as much as possible: upon this blood, which only dropped at first, flowing freely, in three minutes after the man opened his eyes; and a