"Well," says William, "are you satisfied the next will be better?"
"No, no," says I; "much worse, to be sure."
"Why, then," says he, "shooting yourself is the devil's motion, no doubt; for it is the devil of a reason, that, because thou art in an ill case, therefore thou must put thyself into a worse."
This shocked my reason indeed. "Well, but," says I, "there is no bearing the miserable condition I am in."
"Very well," says William; "but it seems there is some bearing a worse condition; and so you will shoot yourself, that you may be past remedy?"
"I am past remedy already," says I.
"How do you know that?" says he.
"I am satisfied of it," said I.
"Well," says he, "but you are not sure; so you will shoot yourself to make it certain; for though on this side death you cannot be sure you will be damned at all, yet the moment you step on the other side of time you are sure of it; for when it is done, it is not to be said then that you will be, but that you are damned."
"Well, but," says William, as if he had been between jest and earnest, "pray, what didst thou dream of last night?"
"Why," said I, "I had frightful dreams all night; and, particularly, I dreamed that the devil came for me, and asked me what my name was; and I told him. Then he asked me what trade I was. 'Trade?' says I; 'I am a thief, a rogue, by my calling: I am a pirate and a murderer, and ought to be hanged.' 'Ay, ay,' says the devil, 'so you do; and you are the man I looked for, and therefore come along with me.' At which I was most horribly frighted, and cried out so that it waked me; and I have been in horrible agony ever since."
"Very well," says William; "come, give me the pistol thou talkedst of just now."
"Why," says I, "what will you do with it?"
"Do with it!" says William. "Why, thou needest not shoot thyself; I shall be obliged to do it for thee. Why, thou wilt destroy us all."
"What do you mean, William?" said I.
"Mean!" said he; "nay, what didst thou mean, to cry out aloud in thy sleep, 'I am a thief, a pirate, a murderer, and ought to be hanged'? Why, thou wilt ruin us all. 'Twas well the Dutchman did not understand English. In short, I must shoot thee, to save my own life. Come, come," says he, "give me thy pistol."
I confess this terrified me again another way, and I began to be sensible that, if anybody had been near me to understand English, I had been undone. The thought of shooting myself forsook me from that time; and I turned to William, "You disorder me extremely, William," said I; "why, I am never safe, nor is it safe to keep me company. What shall I do? I shall betray you all."
"Come, come, friend Bob," says he, "I'll put an end to it all, if you will take my advice."
"How's that?" said I.
"Why, only," says he, "that the next time thou talkest with the devil, thou wilt talk a little softlier, or we shall be all undone, and you too."
This frighted me, I must confess, and allayed a great deal of the trouble of mind I was in. But William, after he had done jesting with me, entered upon a very long and serious discourse with me about the nature of my circumstances, and about repentance; that it ought to be attended, indeed, with a deep abhorrence of the crime that I had to charge myself with; but that to despair of God's mercy was no part of repentance, but putting myself into the condition of the devil; indeed, that I must apply myself with a sincere, humble confession of my crime, to ask pardon of God, whom I had offended, and cast myself upon His mercy, resolving to be willing to make restitution, if ever it should please God to put it in my power, even to the utmost of what I had in the world. And this, he told me, was the method which he had resolved upon himself; and in this, he told me, he had found comfort.
I had a great deal of satisfaction in William's discourse, and it quieted me very much; but William was very anxious ever after about my talking in my sleep, and took care to lie with me always himself, and to keep me from lodging in any house where so much as a word of English was understood.
However, there was not the like occasion afterward; for I was much more composed in my mind, and resolved for the future to live a quite different life from what I had done. As to the wealth I had, I looked upon it as nothing; I resolved to set it apart to any such opportunity of doing justice as God should put into my hand; and the miraculous opportunity I had afterwards of applying some parts of it to preserve a ruined family, whom I had plundered, may be worth reading, if I have room for it in this account.
With these resolutions I began to be restored to some degree of quiet in my mind; and having, after almost three months' stay at Bassorah, disposed of some goods, but having a great quantity left, we hired boats according to the Dutchman's direction, and went up to Bagdad, or Babylon, on the river Tigris, or rather Euphrates. We had a very considerable cargo of goods with us, and therefore made a great figure there, and were received with respect. We had, in particular, two–and–forty bales of Indian stuffs of sundry sorts, silks, muslins, and fine chintz; we had fifteen bales of very fine China silks, and seventy packs or bales of spices, particularly cloves and nutmegs, with other goods. We were bid money here for our cloves, but the Dutchman advised us not to part with them, and told us we should get a better price at Aleppo, or in the Levant; so we prepared for the caravan.
We concealed our having any gold or pearls as much as we could, and therefore sold three or four bales of China silks and Indian calicoes, to raise money to buy camels and to pay the customs which are taken at several places, and for our provisions over the deserts.
I travelled this journey, careless to the last degree of my goods or wealth, believing that, as I came by it all by rapine and violence, God would direct that it should be taken from me again in the same manner; and, indeed, I think I might say I was very willing it should be so. But, as I had a merciful Protector above me, so I had a most faithful steward, counsellor, partner, or whatever I might call him, who was my guide, my pilot, my governor, my everything, and took care both of me and of all we had; and though he had never been in any of these parts of the world, yet he took the care of all upon him; and in about nine–and–fifty days we arrived from Bassorah, at the mouth of the river Tigris or Euphrates, through the desert, and through Aleppo to Alexandria, or, as we call it, Scanderoon, in the Levant.
Here William and I, and the other two, our faithful comrades, debated what we should do; and here William and I resolved to separate from the other two, they resolving to go with the Dutchman into Holland, by the means of some Dutch ship which lay then in the road. William and I told them we resolved to go and settle in the Morea, which then belonged to the Venetians.
It is true we acted wisely in it not to let them know whither we went, seeing we had resolved to separate; but we took our old doctor's directions how to write to him in Holland, and in England, that we might have intelligence from him on occasion, and promised to give him an account how to write to us, which we afterwards did, as may in time be made out.
We stayed here some time after they were gone, till at length, not being thoroughly resolved whither to go till then, a Venetian ship touched at Cyprus, and put in at Scanderoon to look for freight home. We took the hint, and bargaining for our passage, and the freight of our goods, we embarked for Venice, where, in two–and–twenty days, we arrived safe, with all our treasure, and with such a cargo, take our goods and our money and our jewels together, as, I believed, was never brought into the city by two single men, since the state of Venice had a being.
We kept ourselves here incognito for a great while, passing for two Armenian merchants still, as we had done before; and by this time we had gotten so much of the Persian and Armenian jargon, which they talked at Bassorah and Bagdad, and everywhere that we came in the country, as was sufficient to make us able to talk to one another, so as not to be understood by anybody, though sometimes hardly by ourselves.