Then comes by one of those sort of people who make it their business to
spirit away little children, a trade chiefly practised where they found
little children well dressed, and for bigger children, to sell them to
the plantations.

The woman, pretending to take me up in her arms and play with me, draws
the girl a good way from the house, and then bids her go back to the
maid, and tell her that a gentlewoman had taken a fancy to the child.
And so, while the girl went, she carries me quite away.

From that time, it seems, I was disposed of to a beggar woman, and after
that to a gipsy, till I was about six years old.

And this gipsy, though I was continually dragged about with her from one
part of the country to the other, never let me want for anything. I
called her mother, but she told me at last she was not my mother, but
that she bought me for twelve shillings, and that my name was Bob
Singleton, not Robert, but plain Bob.

Who my father and mother really were I have never learnt.

When my gipsy mother happened in process of time to be hanged, I was
sent to a parish school; and then I was moved from one parish to
another, and at Bussleton, near Southampton, the master of a ship took a
fancy to me, and though I was not above twelve years old, he carried me
to sea with him on a voyage to Newfoundland.

I went several voyages with him, when, coming home from Newfoundland
about the year 1695, we were taken by an Algerine rover, which was in
its turn taken by two great Portuguese men-of-war.