old parson had said to me when I was a child of about eight or nine years
old; nay, I was preparing and growing up apace to be as wicked as anybody
could be, or perhaps ever was. Fate certainly thus directed my beginning,
knowing that I had work which I had to do in the world, which nothing but
one hardened against all sense of honesty or religion could go through; and
yet, even in this state of original wickedness, I entertained such a
settled abhorrence of the abandoned vileness of the Portuguese, that I
could not but hate them most heartily from the beginning, and all my life
afterwards. They were so brutishly wicked, so base and perfidious, not only
to strangers but to one another, so meanly submissive when subjected, so
insolent, or barbarous and tyrannical, when superior, that I thought there
was something in them that shocked my very nature. Add to this that it is
natural to an Englishman to hate a coward, it all joined together to make
the devil and a Portuguese equally my aversion.

However, according to the English proverb, he that is shipped with the
devil must sail with the devil; I was among them, and I managed myself as
well as I could. My master had consented that I should assist the captain
in the office, as above; but, as I understood afterwards that the captain
allowed my master half a moidore a month for my service, and that he had my
name upon the ship's books also, I expected that when the ship came to be
paid four months' wages at the Indies, as they, it seems, always do, my
master would let me have something for myself.

But I was wrong in my man, for he was none of that kind; he had taken me up
as in distress, and his business was to keep me so, and make his market of
me as well as he could, which I began to think of after a different manner
than I did at first, for at first I thought he had entertained me in mere
charity, upon seeing my distressed circumstances, but did not doubt but
when he put me on board the ship, I should have some wages for my service.