Page:An English Garner Ingatherings from Our History and Literature (Volume 1 1877).pdf/359

 companions we did frequently discourse; and in the cool of the evening walked abroad in the field for a refreshing, being tired with being all day in our house or prison.

This course lasted until GOD was pleased to visit us both with the country's sickness, ague and fever. The sight of my father's misery was far more grievous unto me than the sense of my own; that I must be a spectator of his affliction, and not in any way able to help him. And the sight of me so far augmented his grief, that he would often say "What have I done, when I charged you to come ashore to me again? Your dutifulness to me hath brought you to be a captive. I am old and cannot long hold out, but you may live to see many days of sorrow; if the mercy of GOD do not prevent it. But my prayers to GOD for you shall not be wanting; that for this cause, he would visit you with his mercy and bestow on you a blessing."

My father's ague lasted not long; but deep grief daily more and more increased upon him; which so overwhelmed even his very heart, that with many a bitter sigh, he used to utter these words, "These many years, even from my youth, have I used the seas; in which time the Lord GOD hath delivered me from a multitude of dangers"—rehearsing to me what great dangers he had been in in the Straits of Gibraltar by the Turks and by other enemies, and also in many other places too large here to insert; and always how merciful GOD was to him in delivering him out of them all—"so that he never knew what it was to be in the hands of an enemy: but now, in his old age, when his head was grown grey, to be a captive to the heathen, and to leave his bones in the eastern parts of the world: when it was his hope and intention, if GOD had permitted him to finish this voyage, to spend and end the residue of his days at home with his children in his native country; and so to settle me in the ship in his stead. The thoughts of these things did even break his heart."

Upwards of three months, my father lay in this manner upon his bed; having only under him a mat and the carpet he sat upon in the boat when he came ashore, and a small quilt I had to cover him withal. And I had only a mat upon the ground, and a pillow to lay on; and nothing to cover me but the clothes on my back: but when I was cold and that