ey would undertake to look after my plantation in my
absence, and would dispose of it to such as I should direct, if I
miscarried. This they all engaged to do, and entered into writings or
covenants to do so; and I made a formal will, disposing of my plantation
and effects in case of my death, making the captain of the ship that had
saved my life, as before, my universal heir, but obliging him to dispose
of my effects as I had directed in my will; one half of the produce being
to himself, and the other to be shipped to England.

In short, I took all possible caution to preserve my effects and to keep
up my plantation. Had I used half as much prudence to have looked into
my own interest, and have made a judgment of what I ought to have done
and not to have done, I had certainly never gone away from so prosperous
an undertaking, leaving all the probable views of a thriving
circumstance, and gone upon a voyage to sea, attended with all its common
hazards, to say nothing of the reasons I had to expect particular
misfortunes to myself.

But I was hurried on, and obeyed blindly the dictates of my fancy rather
than my reason; and, accordingly, the ship being fitted out, and the
cargo furnished, and all things done, as by agreement, by my partners in
the voyage, I went on board in an evil hour, the 1st September 1659,
being the same day eight years that I went from my father and mother at
Hull, in order to act the rebel to their authority, and the fool to my
own interests.

Our ship was about one hundred and twenty tons burden, carried six guns
and fourteen men, besides the master, his boy, and myself. We had on
board no large cargo of goods, except of such toys as were fit for our
trade with the negroes, such as beads, bits of glass, shells, and other
trifles, especially little looking-glasses, knives, scissors, hatchets,
and the like.

The same day I went on board we set sail, standing away to the northward
upon our own coast, with design to stretch over for the African coast
when we came about ten or twelve degrees of northern latitude, which, it
seems, was the manner of course in those days. We had very good weather,
only excessively hot, all the way upon our own coast, till we came to the
height of Cape St. Augustino; from whence, keeping further off at sea, we
lost sight of land, and steered as if we were bound for the isle Fernando
de Noronha, holding our course N.E. by N., and leaving those isles on the
east. I