When I was in this kind of rapture, Wright came to me privately, and asked whether I was determined to make the attempt. I replied, I only longed for night to come. Then at his request I went below with him to his berth, when he showed me, all else being on deck, a short-barrelled musket, hid in the bedding, with a flask of fine glazed powder and a small bag of balls. There was also a leathern bottle, called a broc, well stoppered and full of water, and some biscuits. ‘These things,’ says he, ‘will be necessary for you, so that you may not want, until you pick up some comrade along shore. Should you not succeed at first, you must trust to your gun for food, and you will soon find water, of which there is abundance, fresh and clear.’ I thanked him heartily for his goodness and foresight, for I had thought of nothing but how I should get ashore, not even how I should satisfy my hunger and thirst when I landed. But Wright was my good genius, and, taking advantage of our being now alone, for the deck was so much the more pleasant that all were there, he made me put on a couple of stout linen shirts which he gave me, as also a good jacket, such as sailors wear, and a pair of strong yet light shoes, like pumps. I was quite overpowered with such goodness, and could scarce refrain from weeping. What a poor forlorn miserable creature I should have been had Wright not been on board! and although I was nothing to him, yet had I been his son, the old man could not have used me with more grave and simple kindness. I told him that when he first spoke to me I was in great desolation and despair of spirit, but that now my heart was cheery and buoyant, and that I well trusted to see my own land again. At this his face darkened, and he heaved a great sigh. I went on, and said that he, too, I hoped, would end his days, not in these burning climes, but in the green valley of Hertfordshire, where he told me he was born. ‘No, no,’ says he, ‘never—never! I shall see England no more. I am but a wanderer and an outcast, even like Cain of old, and the place that once knew me, shall know me no more for ever.’ With this he sat himself down on a great sea-chest, and putting his hands to his face, sobbed aloud, so that all his great frame was shaken. I was much moved, and strove to take his hand. Then he looked at me with his large grey eyes, all dry, and, as I thought, somewhat bloodshot, for he could not weep, and said, ‘In a churchyard there, lie my fathers and my kindred, also the wife of my bosom and the two children of my loins, but my dust must not mingle with theirs. I shall sleep my last sleep in some desert wilderness, or amid the weeds under the sea.’ Observing me much astonished, and, perhaps, somewhat frightened, for I thought he must have committed some great and horrible crime, he grasped my hand in his, till I thought the blood came, and said, in a low voice—