ns. In
this manner we conversed; and as he was of a most obliging
gentleman-like behaviour, so he was, if I may be allowed to say so, a
man of good sense, and, as I believe, of great learning.

He gave me a most diverting account of his life, and of the many
extraordinary events of it; of many adventures which had befallen him in
the few years that he had been abroad in the world, and particularly
this was very remarkable; viz. that during the voyage he was now engaged
in he had the misfortune to be five times shipped and unshipped, and
never to go to the place whither any of the ships he was in were at
first designed: that his first intent was to have gone to Martinico, and
that he went on board a ship bound thither at St. Maloes; but being
forced into Lisbon in bad weather, the ship received some damage by
running aground in the mouth of the river Tagus, and was obliged to
unload her cargo there: that finding a Portuguese ship there, bound to
the Madeiras, and ready to sail, and supposing he should easily meet
with a vessel there bound to Martinico, he went on board in order to
sail to the Madeiras; but the master of the Portuguese ship being but an
indifferent mariner, had been out in his reckoning, and they drove to
Fyal; where, however, he happened to find a very good market for his
cargo, which was corn, and therefore resolved not to go to the Madeiras,
but to load salt at the isle of May, to go away to Newfoundland. He had
no remedy in the exigence but to go with the ship, and had a pretty good
voyage as far as the Banks, (so they call the place where they catch the
fish) where meeting with a French ship bound from France to Quebec, in
the river of Canada, and from thence to Martinico, to carry provisions,
he thought he should have an opportunity to complete his first design.
But when he came to Quebec the master of the ship died, and the ship
proceeded no farther. So the next voyage he shipped himself for France,
in the ship that was burnt, when we took them up at sea, and then
shipped them with us for the East Indies, as I have already said. Thus
he had been disappointed in five voyages, all, as I may call it, in one
voyage, besides what I shall have occasion to mention farther of the
same person.

But I shall not make digressions into other men's stories which have no
relation to my own. I return to what concerns our affair in the island.
He came to me one morning, for he lodged among us all the while we were