to the emperor's court, as the rest of our
men were, but was kept by the captain of the rover as his proper prize,
and made his slave, being young and nimble, and fit for his business. 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 to me, that I should be miserable and
have none to relieve me, which I thought was now so effectually brought
to pass that I could not be worse; for now the hand of Heaven had
overtaken me, and I was undone without redemption; but, alas! this was
but a taste of the misery I was to go through, as will appear in the
sequel of this story.

As my new patron, or master, had taken me home to his house, so I was in
hopes that he would take me with him when he went to sea again, believing
that it would some time or other be his fate to be taken by a Spanish or
Portugal man-of-war; and that then I should be set at liberty. But this
hope of mine was soon taken away; for when he went to sea, he left me on
shore to look after his little garden, and do the common drudgery of
slaves about his house; and when he came home again from his cruise, he
ordered me to lie in the cabin to look after the ship.

Here I meditated nothing but my escape, and what method I might take to
effect it, but found no way that had the least probability in it; nothing
presented to make the supposition of it rational; for I had nobody to
communicate it to that would embark with me--no fellow-slave, no
Englishman, Irishman, or Scotchman there but myself; so that for two
years, though I often pleased myself with the imagination, yet I never
had the least encouraging prospect of putting it in practice.

After about two years, an odd circumstance presented itself, which put
the old thought of making some attempt for my liberty again in my head.
My patron lying at home longer than usual without fitting out his ship,
which, as I heard, was for want of money, he used constantly, once or
twice a week, sometimes oftener if the weather was fair, to take the
ship's pinnace and go out into the road a-fishing; and as he always took
me and young Maresco with him to row the boat, we made him very merry,
and I proved very dexterous in catching fish; insomuch that sometimes he
would send me with a Moor, one of his kinsmen, and the youth--the
Maresco, as they called him--to catch a dish of fish for him.

It happened on