rise that might drive the ship over to the coast of England,
whether they would or not, that I might be set on shore anywhere upon
English ground.

This wicked wish had not been out of my thoughts above two or three
hours, but the master steering away to the north, as was his course to
do, we lost sight of land on that side, and only had the Flemish shore
in view on our right hand, or, as the seamen call it, the starboard
side; and then, with the loss of the sight, the wish for landing in
England abated, and I considered how foolish it was to wish myself out
of the way of my business; that if I had been on shore in England, I
must go back to Holland on account of my bills, which were so
considerable, and I having no correspondence there, that I could not
have managed it without going myself. But we had not been out of sight
of England many hours before the weather began to change; the winds
whistled and made a noise, and the seamen said to one another that it
would blow hard at night. It was then about two hours before sunset, and
we were passed by Dunkirk, and I think they said we were in sight of
Ostend; but then the wind grew high and the sea swelled, and all things
looked terrible, especially to us that understood nothing but just what
we saw before us; in short, night came on, and very dark it was; the
wind freshened and blew harder and harder, and about two hours within
night it blew a terrible storm.

I was not quite a stranger to the sea, having come from Rochelle to
England when I was a child, and gone from London, by the River Thames,
to France afterward, as I have said. But I began to be alarmed a little
with the terrible clamour of the men over my head, for I had never been
in a storm, and so had never seen the like, or heard it; and once
offering to look out at the door of the steerage, as they called it, it
struck me with such horror (the darkness, the fierceness of the wind,
the dreadful height of the waves, and the hurry the Dutch sailors were
in, whose language I did not understand one word of, neither when they
cursed or when they prayed); I say, all these things together filled me
with terror, and, in short, I began to be very much frighted.

When I was come back into the great cabin, there sat Amy, who was very
sea-sick, and I had a little before given her a sup of cordial waters to
help her stomach. When Amy saw me come back and sit down without
speaking, for so I did, she looked two or three tim