measures to take, and what course of life to lead. An irresistible
reluctance continued to going home; and as I stayed a while, the
remembrance of the distress I had been in wore off; and as that abated,
the little motion I had in my desires to a return wore off with it, till
at last I quite laid aside the thoughts of it, and looked out for
a voyage.

That evil influence which carried me first away from my father's house,
that hurried me into the wild and indigested notion of raising my
fortune; and that impressed those conceits so forcibly upon me, as to
make me deaf to all good advice, and to the entreaties and even the
command of my father: I say, the same influence, whatever it was,
presented the most unfortunate of all enterprises to my view; and I went
on board a vessel bound to the coast of Africa; or, as our sailors
vulgarly call it, a voyage to Guinea.

It was my great misfortune that in all these adventures I did not ship
myself as a sailor; whereby, though I might indeed have worked a little
harder than ordinary, yet at the same time I had learnt the duty and
office of a foremastman; and in time might have qualified myself for a
mate or lieutenant, if not for a master. But as it was always my fate to
choose for the worse, so I did here; for having money in my pocket, and
good clothes upon my back, I would always go on board in the habit of a
gentleman; and so I neither had any business in the ship, or learnt
to do any.

It was my lot first of all to fall into pretty good company in London,
which does not always happen to such loose and unguided young fellows as
I then was; the devil generally not omitting to lay some snare for them
very early: but it was not so with me. I first fell acquainted with the