But he thought, it seems, quite otherwise; and when I procured one to
speak to him about it, when the ship was paid at Goa, he flew into the
greatest rage imaginable, and called me English dog, young heretic, and
threatened to put me into the Inquisition. Indeed, of all the names the
four-and-twenty letters could make up, he should not have called me
heretic; for as I knew nothing about religion, neither Protestant from
Papist, or either of them from a Mahometan, I could never be a heretic.
However, it passed but a little, but, as young as I was, I had been
carried into the Inquisition, and there, if they had asked me if I was a
Protestant or a Catholic, I should have said yes to that which came
first. If it had been the Protestant they had asked first, it had
certainly made a martyr of me for I did not know what.

But the very priest they carried with them, or chaplain of the ship, as we
called him, saved me; for seeing me a boy entirely ignorant of religion,
and ready to do or say anything they bid me, he asked me some questions
about it, which he found I answered so very simply, that he took it upon
him to tell them he would answer for my being a good Catholic, and he hoped
he should be the means of saving my soul, and he pleased himself that it
was to be a work of merit to him; so he made me as good a Papist as any of
them in about a week's time.

I then told him my case about my master; how, it is true, he had taken me
up in a miserable case on board a man-of-war at Lisbon; and I was indebted
to him for bringing me on board this ship; that if I had been left at
Lisbon, I might have starved, and the like; and therefore I was willing to
serve him, but that I hoped he would give me some little consideration for
my service, or let me know how long he expected I should serve him for
nothing.