ng any
part of the stock.

This was a fair proposal, it must be confessed, had it been made to any
one that had not a settlement and plantation of his own to look after,
which was in a fair way of coming to be very considerable, and with a
good stock upon it. But for me, that was thus entered and established,
and had nothing to do but go on as I had begun, for three or four years
more, and to have sent for the other hundred pounds from England; and
who, in that time, and with that little addition, could scarce have
failed of being worth three or four thousand pounds sterling, and that
increasing too; for me to think of such a voyage, was the most
preposterous thing that ever man, in such circumstances, could be
guilty of.

But I, that was born to be my own destroyer, could no more resist the
offer, than I could restrain my first rambling designs, when my father's
good counsel was lost upon me. In a word, I told them I would go with
all my heart, if they 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 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 again, the 1st of
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 interest.