house, and desired to be conveyed
across the Severn. The people in the house tried to dissuade me from my
design. They said no one would accompany me, for it was quite a tempest. I
replied, that I would pay those handsomely who would go with me. A person
present asked me if I would give him three guineas for a boat, I replied I
would. He could not for shame retract. He went out, and in about half an
hour brought a person with him. We were obliged to have a lanthorn as far
as the boat. We got on board, and went off. But such a passage I had never
before witnessed. The wind was furious. The waves ran high. I could see
nothing but white foam. The boat, also, was tossed up and down in such a
manner that it was with great difficulty I could keep my seat. The rain,
too, poured down in such torrents, that we were all of us presently wet
through. We had been, I apprehend, more than an hour in this situation,
when the boatmen began to complain of cold and weariness. I saw, also, that
they began to be uneasy, for they did not know where they were. They had no
way of forming any judgment about their course, but by knowing the point
from whence the wind blew, and by keeping the boat in a relative position
towards it. I encouraged them as well as I could, though I was beginning to
be uneasy myself, and also sick. In about a quarter of an hour they began
to complain again. They said they could pull no longer. They acknowledged,
however, that they were getting nearer to the shore, though on what part of
it, they could not tell. I could do nothing but bid them hope. They then
began to reproach themselves for having come out with me. I told them I had
not forced them, but that it was a matter of their own choice. In the midst
of this conversation I informed them that I thought I saw either a star or
a light straight forward. They both looked at it, and pronounced it to be a
light, and added with great joy that it must be a light in the
Passage-house: and so we found it; for in about ten minutes afterwards we
landed, and, on reaching the house, learnt that a servant maid had been
accidentally talking to some other person on the stair-case, near a window,
with a candle in her hand, and that the light had appeared to us from that
circumstance.

It was now near eleven o'clock. My messenger, it appeared, had arrived safe
at about five in the evening, and had proceeded on his route. I was very
cold on my arrival, and sick also. There seemed to