he had used the same earnest persuasions to keep him from going into
the Low Country wars, but could not prevail, his young desires
prompting him to run into the army, where he was killed; and though he
said he would not cease to pray for me, yet he would venture to say to
me, that if I did take this foolish step, God would not bless me,
and I would have leisure hereafter to reflect upon having neglected
his counsel when there might be none to assist in my recovery.

  I observed in this last part of his discourse, which was truly
prophetic, though I suppose my father did not know it to be so himself
- I say, I observed the tears run down his face very plentifully,
and especially when he spoke of my brother who was killed; and that
when he spoke of my having leisure to repent, and none to assist me,
he was so moved that he broke off the discourse, and told me his heart
was so full he could say no more to me.

  I was sincerely affected with this discourse, as indeed who could be
otherwise? and I resolved not to think of going abroad any more, but
to settle at home according to my father's desire. But alas! a few
days wore it all off; and, in short, to prevent any of my father's
farther importunities, in a few weeks after I resolved to run quite
away from him. However, I did not act so hastily neither as my first
heat of resolution prompted, but I took my mother, at a time when I
thought her a little pleasanter than ordinary, and told her that my
thoughts were so entirely bent upon seeing the world that I should
never settle to anything with resolution enough to go through with it,
and my father had better give me his consent than force me to go
without it; that I was now eighteen years old, which was too late to
go apprentice to a trade, or clerk to an attorney; that I was sure
if I did, I should never serve out my time, and I should certainly run
away from my master before my time was out, and go to sea; and if
she would speak to my father to let me go but one voyage abroad, if
I came home again and did not like it, I would go no more, and I would
promise by a double diligence to recover that time I had lost.

  This put my mother into a great passion. She told me she knew it
would be to no purpose to speak to my father upon any such subject;
that he knew too well what was my interest to give his consent to
anything so much for my hurt, and that she wondered how I could
think of any such thing after such a discourse as I had had with my
father, and such kind and tender expressions as she knew my father had
used to me; and that, in short, if I would ruin myself there was no
help for me; but I might depend I should never have their consent to
it; that for her part, she should not have so much hand in my
destruction, and I should never have it to say, that my mother was
willing when my father was not.

  Though my mother refused to move it to my father, yet, as I have
heard afterwards, she reported all the discourse to him, and that my
father, after showing a great concern at it, said to her with a
sigh, "That boy might be happy if he would stay at home, but if he
goes abroad he will be the miserablest wretch that was ever born: I
can give no consent to it."

  It was not till almost a year after this that I broke loose,
though in the meantime I continued obstinately deaf to all proposals
of settling to business, and frequently expostulating with my father
and mother about their being so positively determined against what
they knew my inclinations prompted me to. But being one day at Hull,
where I went casually, and without any purpose of making an
elopement that time; but I say, being there, and one of my
companions being going by sea to London, in his father's ship, and
prompting me to go with them, with the common allurement of sea-faring
men, viz., that it should cost me nothing for my passage, I
consulted neither father nor mother any more, nor so much as sent them
word of it; but leaving them to hear of it as they might, without
asking God's blessing, or my father's, without any consideration of
circumstances or consequences, and in an ill hour, God knows, on the
first of September, 1651, I went on board a ship bound for London.
Never any young adventurer's misfortunes, I believe began sooner, or
continued longer than mine. The ship was no sooner gotten out of the
Humber, but the wind began to blow, and the waves to rise in a most
frightful manner; and as I had never been at sea before, I was most
inexpressibly sick in body, and terrified in my 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 counsel 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 which it has been 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, which I had never
been upon before, went very high, though nothing like what I have seen
many times since; no, nor like 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,
in the trough or hollow of the sea, we should never rise more; and
in this agony of mind I made many vows of resolutions, that if it
would please God here to spare my life 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.