With these reflections I worked my mind up, not only to resignation to the will of God in the present disposition of my circumstances, but even to a sincere thankfulness of my condition; and that I, who was yet a living man, ought not to complain, seeing I had not the due punishment of my sins—that I enjoyed so many mercies, which I had no reason to have expected in that place—that I ought never more to repine at my condition, but to rejoice, and to give daily thanks for that daily bread, which nothing but a cloud of wonders could have brought—that I ought to consider I had been fed even by a miracle, even as great as that of feeding Elijah by ravens—nay, by a long series of miracles; and that I could hardly have named a place in the uninhabited part of the world, where I could have been cast more to my advantage—a place where, as I had no society, which was my affliction on one hand, so I found no ravenous beasts, no furious wolves or tigers, to threaten my life; no venomous creatures or poisonous, which I might have fed on to my hurt; no savages to murder and devour me.
In a word, as my life was a life of sorrow one way, so it was a life of mercy another; and I wanted nothing to make it a life of comfort, but to be able to make my sense of God’s goodness to me, and care over me in this condition, be my daily consolation; and after I made a just improvement of these things, I went away, and was no more sad.
I had now been here so long, that many things which I brought on shore for my help were either quite gone or very much wasted, and near spent.
My ink, as I observed, had been gone for some time, all but a very little, which I eked out with water a little and a little, till it was so pale it scarce left any appearance of black upon the paper; as long as it lasted, I made use of it to minute down the days of the month on which any remarkable thing happened to me; and first, by casting up times past, I remember that there was a strange concurrence of days, in the various providences which befell me, and which, if I had been superstitiously inclined to observe days as fatal or fortunate, I might have had reason to have looked upon with a great deal of curiosity.
First, I had observed, that the same day that I broke away from my father and my friends, and ran away to Hull, in order to go to sea, the same day afterwards I was taken by the Sallee man-of-war, and made a slave.
The same day of the year that I escaped out of the wreck of the ship in Yarmouth roads, that same day of the year afterwards I made my escape from Sallee in the boat.
The same day of the year I was born on, namely, the 20th of September, the same day I had my life so miraculously saved twenty-six years after, when I was cast on shore in this island; so that my wicked life, and solitary life, both began on a day.
The next thing to my ink’s being wasted, was that of my bread, I mean the biscuit which I brought out of the ship. This I had husbanded to the last degree, allowing myself but one cake of bread a-day, for above a year; and yet I was quite without bread for a year, before I got any corn of my own; and great reason I had to be thankful that I had any at all, the getting it being, as it has been already observed, next to miraculous.
My clothes, too, began to decay mightily; as to linen, I had none a good while, except some chequered shirts which I found in the chests of the other seamen, and which I carefully preserved, because many times I could bear no other clothes on but a shirt; and it was a very great help to me that I had, among all the men’s clothes of the ship, almost three dozen of shirts. There were also several thick watch-coats of the seamen, which were left behind, but they were too hot to wear; and though it is true that the weather was so violently hot that there was no need of clothes, yet I could not go quite naked—no, though I had been inclined to it, which I was not—nor could I abide the thought of it, though I was all alone.