rrel happened between the master of their vessel and the captain of a
Jamaicaman homeward bound. It ended in a duel with sword and pistol, and
the captain of the transport having carried John with him, he behaved so
well upon this occasion that he promised him his liberty as soon as they
arrived in America, which he honorably performed; and Jack was so
indefatigable in his endeavours to get home that he arrived at London
six weeks before the captain came back.

He herded again with his old crew, though before he was able to do much
mischief amongst them he was apprehended for returning from
transportation, and was at the next sessions tried and convicted. By
this time the captain who had carried him was arrived, and hearing of
John's misfortune, he made such interest as procured the sentence of
death to be changed into a second transportation.

Such narrow escapes, one would have imagined, might have taught him how
dangerous a thing it was to dally with the laws of the nation in any
respect whatsoever; and yet, when he was on shore in New England, where
the master took care to provide him with as easy a service as a man
could have wished, as soon as the captain's back was turned, he found
means to give the planter the slip, and in nine months' time revisited
London a second time. Whether he intended to have gone on in the old
trade or no is impossible for us to determine, but this we are certain,
that he had not been in England many weeks ere a person who made it his
business to detect such as returned from transportation clapped him up
in his old lodging at Newgate, brought him to his trial, and convicted
him the third time. As soon as he had received sentence, he relinquished
all hopes of life, and as in all this time he had never made any enquiry
after his wife at Yarmouth, so he would not now bring an odium upon her
and her family by sending to them, and making his misfortune public in
the place where they lived.

The man seemed to be of an easy, tractable disposition, readily yielding
to whatever those who conversed with them desired to bring him to,
whether it were good or evil. He attended with great seeming piety and
devotion to the books which Thomas Smith read to his fellow prisoners,
and gained thereby a tolerable notion of the duty of repentance, and
that faith which men ought to have in Jesus Christ. Thus by degrees he
brought himself to a perfect indifference as to life or death, and at
the place of exec