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Page 64
"We sailed near twelve hours, when we came in sight of the ship we
were in pursuit of, and which we should probably have soon come up
with had not a very thick mist ravished her from our eyes. This
mist continued several hours, and when it cleared up we discovered
our companion at a great distance from us; but what gave us (I
mean the captain and his crew) the greatest uneasiness was the
sight of a very large ship within a mile of us, which presently
saluted us with a gun, and now appeared to be a third-rate English
man-of-war. Our captain declared the impossibility of either
fighting or escaping, and accordingly struck without waiting for
the broadside which was preparing for us, and which perhaps would
have prevented me from the happiness I now enjoy." This occasioned
Heartfree to change colour; his wife therefore passed hastily to
circumstances of a more smiling complexion.
"I greatly rejoiced at this event, as I thought it would not only
restore me to the safe possession of my jewels, but to what I
value beyond all the treasure in the universe. My expectation,
however, of both these was somewhat crost for the present: as to
the former, I was told they should be carefully preserved; but
that I must prove my right to them before I could expect their
restoration, which, if I mistake not, the captain did not very
eagerly desire I should be able to accomplish: and as to the
latter, I was acquainted that I should be put on board the first
ship which they met on her way to England, but that they were
proceeding to the West Indies.
"I had not been long on board the man-of-war before I discovered
just reason rather to lament than rejoice at the exchange of my
captivity; for such I concluded my present situation to be. I had
now another lover in the captain of this Englishman, and much
rougher and less gallant than the Frenchman had been. He used me
with scarce common civility, as indeed he shewed very little to
any other person, treating his officers little better than a man
of no great good-breeding would exert to his meanest servant, and
that too on some very irritating provocation. As for me, he
addressed me with the insolence of a basha to a Circassian slave;
he talked to me with the loose licence in which the most
profligate libertines converse with harlots, and which women
abandoned only in a moderate degree detest and abhor. He often
kissed me with very rude familiarity, and one day attempted
further brutality; when a gentleman on board, and who was in my
situation, that is, had been taken by a privateer and was retaken,
rescued me from his hands, for which the captain confined him,
though he was not under his command, two days in irons: when he
was released (for I was not suffered to visit him in his
confinement) I went to him and thanked him with the utmost
acknowledgment for what he had done and suffered on my account.
The gentleman behaved to me in the handsomest manner on this
occasion; told me he was ashamed of the high sense I seemed to
entertain of so small an obligation of an action to which his duty
as a Christian and his honour as a man obliged him. From this time
I lived in great familiarity with this man, whom I regarded as my
protector, which he professed himself ready to be on all
occasions, expressing the utmost abhorrence of the captain's
brutality, especially that shewn towards me, and the tenderness of
a parent for the preservation of my virtue, for which I was not
myself more solicitous than he appeared. He was, indeed, the only
man I had hitherto met since my unhappy departure who did not
endeavour by all his looks, words, and actions, to assure me he
had a liking to my unfortunate person; the rest seeming desirous
of sacrificing the little beauty they complimented to their
desires, without the least consideration of the ruin which I
earnestly represented to them they were attempting to bring on me
and on my future repose.
"I now passed several days pretty free from the captain's
molestation, till one fatal night." Here, perceiving Heartfree
grew pale, she comforted him by an assurance that Heaven had
preserved her chastity, and again had restored her unsullied to
his arms. She continued thus: "Perhaps I give it a wrong epithet
in the word fatal; but a wretched night I am sure I may call it,
for no woman who came off victorious was, I believe, ever in
greater danger. One night I say, having drank his spirits high
with punch, in company with the purser, who was the only man in
the ship he admitted to his table, the captain sent for me into
his cabin; whither, though unwilling, I was obliged to go. We were
no sooner alone together than he seized me by the hand, and, after
affronting my ears with discourse which I am unable to repeat, he
swore a great oath that his passion was to be dallied with no
longer; that I must not expect to treat him in the manner to which
a set of blockhead land-men submitted. 'None of your coquette
airs, therefore, with me, madam,' said he, 'for I am resolved to
have you this night. No struggling nor squalling, for both will be
impertinent. The first man who offers to come in here, I will have
his skin flea'd off at the gangway.' He then attempted to pull me
violently towards his bed. I threw myself on my knees, and with
tears and entreaties besought his compassion; but this was, I
found, to no purpose: I then had recourse to threats, and
endeavoured to frighten him with the consequence; but neither had
this, though it seemed to stagger him more than the other method,
sufficient force to deliver me. At last a stratagem came into my
head, of which my perceiving him reel gave me the first hint. I
entreated a moment's reprieve only, when, collecting all the
spirits I could muster, I put on a constrained air of gayety, and
told him, with an affected laugh, he was the roughest lover I had
ever met with, and that I believed I was the first woman he had
ever paid his addresses to. Addresses, said he; d--n your dresses!
I want to undress you. I then begged him to let us drink some
punch together; for that I loved a can as well as himself, and
never would grant the favour to any man till I had drank a hearty
glass with him. O! said he, if that be all you shall have punch
enough to drown yourself in. At which words he rung the bell, and
ordered in a gallon of that liquor. I was in the meantime obliged
to suffer his nauseous kisses, and some rudenesses which I had
great difficulty to restrain within moderate bounds. When the
punch came in he took up the bowl and drank my health
ostentatiously, in such a quantity that it considerably advanced
my scheme. I followed him with bumpers as fast as possible, and
was myself obliged to drink so much that at another time it would
have staggered my own reason, but at present it did not affect me.
At length, perceiving him very far gone, I watched an opportunity,
and ran out of the cabin, resolving to seek protection of the sea
if I could find no other; but Heaven was now graciously pleased to
relieve me; for in his attempt to pursue me he reeled backwards,
and, falling down the cabbin stairs, he dislocated his shoulder
and so bruised himself that I was not only preserved that night
from any danger of my intended ravisher, but the accident threw
him into a fever which endangered his life, and whether he ever
recovered or no I am not certain; for during his delirious fits
the eldest lieutenant commanded the ship. This was a virtuous and
a brave fellow, who had been twenty-five years in that post
without being able to obtain a ship, and had seen several boys,
the bastards of noblemen, put over his head. One day while the
ship remained under his command an English vessel bound to Cork
passed by; myself and my friend, who had formerly lain two days in
irons on my account, went on board this ship with the leave of the
good lieutenant, who made us such presents as he was able of
provisions, and, congratulating me on my delivery from a danger to
which none of the ship's crew had been strangers, he kindly wished
us both a safe voyage."
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