Page:Life, strange voyages, and uncommon adventures of Ambrose Gwinett.pdf/22

22 in about four hours managed, with the greatest difficulty, to get the vessel again under sail.

I was now standing behind the man at the wheel, leaning against the mizen-mast, returning God thanks in my own mind for our amazing escape, when the boatswain came up to me and said, "Damme, Master Gwinett, you have brought us all into a pretty hole here; if it had not been for you we should not have taken this trip, and lost the substance we have been working for so many years; but you lop too, I assure you." I asked him what he meant? He said he would let me see; upon which he and two or three others of them that came behind him, seizing me by the nape of the neck, and waistband of the breeches, forced me over the rails of the quarter-deck, and dropt me into the sea.

The shock of the fall, and the amaze I was in from so unexpected an accident, almost bereaved me of my senses: I endeavoured, however, to keep myself above water as well as I could, though I had no manner of hopes of saving my life. My first attempt was to swim after the ship; but finding that impracticable, I turned about, and, I believe, might have swam about three quarters of an hour, when being very faint and weak, I began to put up my last prayer to God, and commit myself to the deep; but at that instant turning my head a little aside, I saw, at a small distance from me, what at first I took for a barrel; but, good Lord! what was my joy and astonishment, when coming nearer it, I perceived to be one of our own boats, which had been washed overboard the night before; and to complete my joy, the oars were lashed to the seat. Almost spent as I was, I made a shift to get into it; and here I saw myself freed in a miraculous manner, from the fury of the waves: but