The Runaway Son

I was born in the year 1632, in the city of York, of a good family, though not of that country. My father was a foreigner of Bremen, who settled first at Hull, got a good estate by merchandise, and, leaving off his trade, lived afterward at York, where he married my mother. I was the third son of the family, and not bred to any trade. My eldest brother was killed at a battle against the Spaniards in Flanders; what became of my second brother I never knew, any more than my father or mother knew what became of me.

My father designed me for the law, but I would be satisfied with nothing but going to sea, and my inclination to this led me so strongly against the will, nay, the commands of my father, and against all the entreaties of my mother, that there seemed to be something fatal in that propension of nature, tending directly to the life of misery which was to befall me.

My father, a wise and grave man, called me one morning into his chamber, where he was confined by the gout, and argued with me very warmly upon this subject. He told me that mine was the middle state of life, the upper station of low life, which he had found by long experience was the best state in the world, the most suited to human happiness: not exposed to the miseries and hardships of the laboring part of mankind, nor embarrassed with the pride, luxury, ambition and envy of the upper part. Kings, he said, had frequently lamented the miserable consequences of being born to great things, and wished they had been placed in the middle. He begged me not to throw myself into miseries which nature and the station I was born in seemed to have provided against. And he told me that if I did take this foolish step, God would not bless me, and I should have leisure hereafter to reflect upon having neglected his counsel when there might be none to assist in my recovery. I observed in this last part of his discourse that the tears ran down his face very plentifully.

I was sincerely affected with this discourse, and resolved not to think of going abroad any more. But alas! a few days wore it all off.

On the first of September, 1651, being one day at Hull, and one of my companions being about to sail to London in his father's ship, I went on board, without asking God's blessing or my father's, without any consideration of circumstances or consequences, and in an ill hour, God knows.

Never any young adventurer's misfortunes, I believe, began sooner. The ship was no sooner out of the Humber than the wind began to blow and the sea to rise in a most frightful manner; and as I had never been at sea before, I was most inexpressibly sick in body and terrified in mind. I made many vows that if it would please God to spare my life, I would go directly home to my father and never set foot in a ship again. But the next day the wind was abated, the sea calm, and my companion made me drunk with punch; and in that one night's wickedness I drowned all my repentance and all my resolutions.

I had in a few days a second trial. Off Yarmouth a far more terrible storm arose, our ship foundered, and we were glad to save our lives in the boat. When we came ashore, my companion's father, the master of the ship, hearing who I was and how I had come to sea, spoke to me with great gravity. "Young man," said he, "you ought never to go to sea any more; you ought to take this for a plain and visible token that you are not to be a seafaring man." I was ashamed to go home, to be laughed at by the neighbors, and so I went up to London by land.

There I fell into good company, which does not always happen to such loose and misguided young fellows as I then was. I became acquainted with the master of a ship who had been on the coast of Guinea, and who, taking a fancy to my conversation, offered to take me with him. I carried about forty pounds in toys and trifles, and brought home five pounds nine ounces of gold dust, which yielded me in London almost three hundred pounds. This was the only voyage which I may say was successful in all my adventures, and it filled me with those aspiring thoughts which have since so completed my ruin. I also learned there something of navigation, for my friend the captain took delight to teach me.

My second voyage was the unhappiest that ever man made. Our ship was surprised in the grey of the morning by a Turkish rover of Sallee, which gave chase with all the sail she could make. After a sharp fight we were obliged to yield, and were carried all prisoners into Sallee, a port belonging to the Moors. I was kept by the captain of the rover as his proper prize, and made his slave. 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.

For two years I lived in this condition, always meditating my escape. At last my master sent me out fishing in his boat, with a Moor named Ismael and a youth they called Xury. When we were got some distance out to sea, I stepped forward, took the Moor by surprise, and tossed him clear overboard into the sea. He rose immediately, for he swam like a cork, and begged to be taken in. I told him I had done him no hurt and would do him none if he would be quiet; that he swam well enough to reach the shore, which was near; and that he should make the best of his way to it. Then I turned to the boy and said to him, "Xury, if you will be faithful to me, I will make you a great man; but if you will not swear to be true to me, I must throw you into the sea too." The boy smiled in my face and swore to be faithful to me, and go all over the world with me.

We sailed southward along the coast of Africa for many days, not daring to land for fear of the savage people and the wild creatures, whose roaring and howling in the night were such as I never heard before. I shot a great lion, and we took off his skin. We met with natives who gave us water and provisions, and when I shot a monstrous leopard that had come down to the shore, to their great astonishment, they brought us food in great plenty.

At last, off Cape de Verde, we were taken up by a Portuguese ship bound for the Brazils. The captain, an honest and generous man, would take nothing for my passage. He bought my boat of me, and the lion's skin, and offered me sixty pieces of eight for the boy Xury, which I was loath to take; not that I was unwilling to let the captain have him, but I was very loath to sell the poor boy's liberty, who had assisted me so faithfully in procuring my own. However, when I let him know my reason, he owned it to be just, and offered me this medium: that he would give the boy an obligation to set him free in ten years, if he turned Christian. Upon this, and Xury saying he was willing to go with him, I let the captain have him.

In the Brazils I bought land, learned the manner of planting and making sugar, and became in time a planter. And thus I was arrived at that very middle station, or upper degree of low life, which my father advised me to before, and which, if I resolved to go on with, I might as well have stayed at home.

(End of Episode 1 — continued in Episode 2: The Shipwreck)