Page:Life and unparalleled voyages and adventures of Ambrose Gwinnett (1).pdf/22

 above the water as well as I could, though I had no hopes of saving my life. My first attempt was to swim after the ship; but, finding that impracticable, I turned about, and I believe I had swam for three-quarters of an hour, when, being very faint and weak, I began to put up my last prayer to God, and determined to commit myself to the bottom of 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 what was my joy and astonishment, when, coming near, I perceived it 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 shift to get upon it; and here I saw myself freed in a miraculous manner from the fury of the waves; but, at the same time, I found myself in an open boat, at least sixty leagues from land, without a compass, or any kind of nourishment whatever, unless I might call tobacco some, which I found in a box in one of my waistcoat pockets; and I believe in my conscience that it afforded me a nourishment which, in a great measure, helped to preserve me.

It was a very great blessing for me that moderate weather followed the tempest, by which means I was enabled to keep the boat tolcrably steady. I could not be less than thirty hours in that situation, when I was taken by a Spanish carrick; but I can hardly reckon that among my fortunatc accidents; for, on the same day that I entered the ship, one of the men, while I was asleep, hanging up my clothes among the shrouds to dry, emptied my pockets, and finding several papers relative to the pirates’ affairs, on arriving at Port-Royal, whither they were bound, they seized me as one of the desperate gang.

I must observe to you, that, when I first went into the ship, I gave a false account of myself, which occasioned my ruin; for, now confessing the truth, and telling them that I had been forced into the pirates’