uction; and I should never have it to say
that my mother was willing when my father was not.

Though my mother refused to move it to my father, yet I heard afterwards
that she reported all the discourse to him, and that my father, after
showing a great concern at it, said to her, with a sigh, "That boy might
be happy if he would stay at home; but if he goes abroad, he will be the
most miserable wretch that ever was born: I can give no consent to it."

It was not till almost a year after this that I broke loose, though, in
the meantime, I continued obstinately deaf to all proposals of settling
to business, and frequently expostulated with my father and mother about
their being so positively determined against what they knew my
inclinations prompted me to. But being one day at Hull, where I went
casually, and without any purpose of making an elopement at that time;
but, I say, being there, and one of my companions being about to sail to
London in his father's ship, and prompting me to go with them with the
common allurement of seafaring men, that it should cost me nothing for my
passage, I consulted neither father nor mother any more, nor so much as
sent them word of it; but leaving them to hear of it as they might,
without asking God's blessing or my father's, without any consideration
of circumstances or consequences, and in an ill hour, God knows, on the
1st of September 1651, I went on board a ship bound for London. Never
any young adventurer's misfortunes, I believe, began sooner, or continued
longer than mine. 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 began now seriously to reflect upon what I had
done, and how justly I was overtaken by the judgment of Heaven for my
wicked leaving my father's house, and abandoning my duty. All the good
counsels of my parents, my father's tears and my mother's entreaties,
came now fresh into my mind; and my conscience, which was not yet come to
the pitch of hardness to which it has since, reproached me with the
contempt of advice, and the breach of my duty to God and my father.

All this while the storm increased, and the sea went very high, though
nothing like what I have seen many times since; no, nor what I saw a few
days after; but it was enough to affect me then, who was but a young
sailor, and had