venture again. He, sawey and impudent, mock'd them, ask'd some
of the poor frighted women if they were afraid of going to the
Devil; bid them say their prayers and the like, and then stood
over again, as it were, in a jest. The storm continuing, he
shipp'd a great deal of water that time also. By this time the
rest of the watermen begun to perswade him, and told him, in
short, that if he stood over again the boat would founder, for
that she was a great deal the deeper for the water she had taken
in, and one of them begg'd of him not to venture; he swore at
the fellow, call'd him fool, bade him let him alone to his
business, and he would warrant him; then used a vulgar
sea-proverb, which such fellows have in their mouths, 'Blow
Devil, the more wind, the better boat.'

"The fellow told him in so many words he would drown all the
passengers, and before his face began to strip, and so did two
more, that they might be in condition to swim for their lives.
This extremely terrify'd the passengers, who, having a cloth or
tilt over them, were in no condition to save their lives, so
that there was a dreadful cry among them, and some of the men
were making way to come at the steersman to make him by force
let fly the sail and stand back for the shore; but before they
could get to him the waves broke in upon the boat and carried
them all to the bottom, none escaping but the three watermen
that were prepar'd to swim. {210}

"It was but poor satisfaction for the loss of so many lives, to
say the steersman was drown'd with them, who ought, indeed, to
have died at the gallows, or on the wheel, for he was certainly
the murtherer of all the rest.

"I have many times pass'd between London and Gravesend with
these fellows in their smaller boats, when I have seen them, in
spite of the shrieks and cries of the women and the persuasions
of the men passengers, and, indeed, as if they were the more
bold by how much the passengers were the more afraid; I say, I
have seen them run needless hazards, and go, as it were, within
an inch of death, when they have been under no necessity of it,
and, if not in contempt of the passengers, it has been in meer
laziness to avoid their rowing; and I have been sometimes
oblig'd, especially when there has been more men in the boat of
the same mind, so th