before, I was most inexpressibly sick in body and terrified in
mind. I began now seriously to reflect upon what I had done, and
how justly I was overtaken by the judgment of Heaven for my wicked
leaving my father's house, and abandoning my duty. All the good
counsels of my parents, my father's tears and my mother's
entreaties, came now fresh into my mind; and my conscience, which
was not yet come to the pitch of hardness to which it has since,
reproached me with the contempt of advice, and the breach of my
duty to God and my father.

All this while the storm increased, and the sea went very high,
though nothing like what I have seen many times since; no, nor what
I saw a few days after; but it was enough to affect me then, who
was but a young sailor, and had never known anything of the matter.
I expected every wave would have swallowed us up, and that every
time the ship fell down, as I thought it did, in the trough or
hollow of the sea, we should never rise more; in this agony of
mind, I made many vows and resolutions that if it would please God
to spare my life in this one voyage, if ever I got once my foot
upon dry land again, I would go directly home to my father, and
never set it into a ship again while I lived; that I would take his
advice, and never run myself into such miseries as these any more.
Now I saw plainly the goodness of his observations about the middle
station of life, how easy, how comfortably he had lived all his
days, and never had been exposed to tempests at sea or troubles on
shore; and I resolved that I would, like a true repenting prodigal,
go home to my father.

These wise and sober thoughts continued all the while the storm
lasted, and indeed some time after; but the next day the wind was