apprehended; nor was I carried up the country to the emperor's
court, as the rest of our men were, but was kept by the captain of
the rover as his proper prize, and made his slave, being young and
nimble, and fit for his business. At this surprising change of my
circumstances, from a merchant to a miserable slave, I was
perfectly overwhelmed; and now I looked back upon my father's
prophetic discourse to me, that I should be miserable and have none
to relieve me, which I thought was now so effectually brought to
pass that I could not be worse; for now the hand of Heaven had
overtaken me, and I was undone without redemption; but, alas! this
was but a taste of the misery I was to go through, as will appear
in the sequel of this story.

As my new patron, or master, had taken me home to his house, so I
was in hopes that he would take me with him when he went to sea
again, believing that it would some time or other be his fate to be
taken by a Spanish or Portugal man-of-war; and that then I should
be set at liberty. But this hope of mine was soon taken away; for
when he went to sea, he left me on shore to look after his little
garden, and do the common drudgery of slaves about his house; and
when he came home again from his cruise, he ordered me to lie in
the cabin to look after the ship.

Here I meditated nothing but my escape, and what method I might
take to effect it, but found no way that had the least probability
in it; nothing presented to make the supposition of it rational;
for I had nobody to communicate it to that would embark with me -
no fellow-slave, no Englishman, Irishman, or Scotchman there but
myself; so that for two years, though I often pleased myself with
the imagination, yet I never had the least encouraging prospect of