him, as I have said above; and this, perhaps, obliged him to give my master
such a rough choice, either to set me on shore or to have me hanged on
board. And had my master, indeed, known what good-will I had for him, he
would not have been long in choosing for me; for I had certainly determined
to do him a mischief the first opportunity I had for it. This was,
therefore, a good providence for me to keep me from dipping my hands in
blood, and it made me more tender afterwards in matters of blood than I
believe I should otherwise have been. But as to my being one of them that
was to kill the captain, that I was wronged in, for I was not the person,
but it was really one of them that were pardoned, he having the good luck
not to have that part discovered.

I was now to enter upon a part of independent life, a thing I was indeed
very ill prepared to manage, for I was perfectly loose and dissolute in my
behaviour, bold and wicked while I was under government, and now perfectly
unfit to be trusted with liberty, for I was as ripe for any villainy as a
young fellow that had no solid thought ever placed in his mind could be
supposed to be. Education, as you have heard, I had none; and all the
little scenes of life I had passed through had been full of dangers and
desperate circumstances; but I was either so young or so stupid, that I
escaped the grief and anxiety of them, for want of having a sense of their
tendency and consequences.

This thoughtless, unconcerned temper had one felicity indeed in it, that it
made me daring and ready for doing any mischief, and kept off the sorrow
which otherwise ought to have attended me when I fell into any mischief;
that this stupidity was instead of a happiness to me, for it left my
thoughts free to act upon means of escape and deliverance in my distress,
however great it might be; whereas my companions in the misery were so sunk
by their fear and grief, that they abandoned themselves to the misery of