When the Captain paid off Clark and his companions, he used a stratagem to induce them to work the ship to England. The wages then were forty guineas and forty gallons of rum for the voyage; but John Clark had resolved to visit his brother, according to a promise he made his mother when he parted with her, and no high wages or other inducement would tempt him to break his promise. The Captain professed great generosity, and proposed treating Clark and a young man who was to be his traveling companion, to French brandy; and as Clark suspected with drugged liquor, in order to detain them. He drank but little, while his comrade praised the liquor and took it freely. They had not proceeded far before the young man’s legs gave out, and they were compelled to stop at a strange house till next morning. During the night, the young man was robbed of all he had, and being destitute, Clark, as a genuine sailor, and benevolent withal, divided his purse with his unfortunate friend. And he moralizes on it in this language:--“So here I saw the fruits of Sabbath-breaking and trifling company.” But on looking back on the events of providence from the pinnacle of three score and ten, he says:-- “I now find that it was the interposition of a particular providence of Him, who is loving and mindful of all his creatures, that the forty guineas and forty gallons of rum, and the French brandy made no impression on my mind to induce me to alter my intentions, and especially my promise to the best of mothers.” He learned at a later period, that though the ship got to her place of rendezvous, yet before the fleet was ready to sail to England, it was overtaken by a most furious hurricane, and the ship he aided to load, was stranded, about a quarter of a mile from the beach. The cargo was lost, and the wicked Captain and every sailor on board perished. Clark adds, “So fatal was that storm on that ungodly people, (the inhabitants of Savannah la Mar,) that there was scarcely as many left, as would bury the dead in proper season.” Mr. Clark traveled across the Island to find his brother, and then went to work to obtain money enough to purchase decent clothes, before he would venture into the presence of his brother, who lived in a decent family, and was much respected. He earned money, but Providence seemed to frown on him, for he lost it, and all he had. So he says, “I resolved at last to see my brother, just as I was in my tarpaulin dress, as sinners ought to come to the Saviour, without any righteousness of their own.”