s. Indeed, I at first thought there would be need enough for all,
and much more, if we hoped to maintain our possession of the island, as
shall be seen in the course of that story.

I had not such bad luck in this voyage as I had been used to meet with,
and therefore shall have the less occasion to interrupt the reader, who
perhaps may be impatient to hear how matters went with my colony; yet
some odd accidents, cross winds and bad weather happened on this first
setting out, which made the voyage longer than I expected it at first;
and I, who had never made but one voyage, my first voyage to Guinea, in
which I might be said to come back again, as the voyage was at first
designed, began to think the same ill fate attended me, and that I was
born to be never contented with being on shore, and yet to be always
unfortunate at sea. Contrary winds first put us to the northward, and we
were obliged to put in at Galway, in Ireland, where we lay wind-bound two-
and-twenty days; but we had this satisfaction with the disaster, that
provisions were here exceeding cheap, and in the utmost plenty; so that
while we lay here we never touched the ship's stores, but rather added to
them. Here, also, I took in several live hogs, and two cows with their
calves, which I resolved, if I had a good passage, to put on shore in my
island; but we found occasion to dispose otherwise of them.

We set out on the 5th of February from Ireland, and had a very fair gale
of wind for some days. As I remember, it might be about the 20th of
February in the evening late, when the mate, having the watch, came into
the round-house and told us he saw a flash of fire, and heard a gun
fired; and while he was telling us of it, a boy came in and told us the
boatswain heard another. This made us all run out upon the quarter-deck,
where for a while we heard nothing; but in a few minutes we saw a very
great light, and found that there was some very terrible fire at a
distance; immediately we had recourse to our reckonings, in which we all
agreed that there could be no land that way in which the fire showed
itself, no, not for five hundred leagues, for it appeared at WNW. Upon
this, we concluded it must be some ship on fire at sea; and as, by our
hearing the noise of guns just before, we concluded that it could not be
far off, we stood directly towards it, and were presently satisfied we
should discover it, because the further we sailed, the greater the light
app