Moll Flanders (39 page)

I told him, as to my mother, she must be dead many years before; and as for any other relations that I might have there, I knew them not; that since my misfortunes had reduced me to the condition I had been in for some years, I had not kept up any correspondence with them, and that he would easily believe I should find but a cold reception from them if I should be put to make my first visit in the condition of a transported felon; that therefore, if I went thither, I resolved not to see them; but that I had many views in going there, which took off all the uneasy part of it; and if he found himself obliged to go also, I should easily instruct him how to manage himself so as never to go a servant at all, especially since I found he was not destitute of money, which was the only friend in such a condition.

He smiled and said he did not tell me he had money. I took him up short and told him I hoped he did not understand by my speaking that I should expect any supply from him if he had money; that on the other hand, though I had not a great deal, yet I did not want, and while I had any I would rather add to him than weaken him, seeing, whatever he had, I knew in the case of transportation he would have occasion of it all.

He expressed himself in a most tender manner upon that head. He told me what money he had was not a great deal, but that he would never hide any of it from me if I wanted it, and assured me he did not speak with any such apprehensions; that he was only intent upon what I had hinted to him; that here he knew what to do, but there he should be the most helpless wretch alive.

I told him he frighted himself with that which had no terror in it; that if he had money, as I was glad to hear he had, he might not only avoid the servitude supposed to be the consequence of transportation but begin the world upon such a new foundation as he could not fail of success in, with but the common application usual in such cases; that he could not but call to mind I had recommended it to him many years before and proposed it for restoring our fortunes in the world; and I would tell him now that to convince him both of the certainty of it and of my being fully acquainted with the method, and also fully satisfied in the probability of success, he should first see me deliver myself from the necessity of going over at all, and then that I would go with him freely and of my own choice, and perhaps carry enough with me to satisfy him; that I did not offer it for want of being able to live without assistance from him, but that I thought our mutual misfortunes had been such as were sufficient to reconcile us both to quitting this part of the world and living where nobody could upbraid us with what was past, and without the agonies of a condemned hole to drive us to it; where we should look back on all our past disasters with infinite satisfaction when we should consider that our enemies should entirely forget us and that we should live as new people in a new world, nobody having anything to say to us or we to them.

I pressed this home to him with so many arguments, and answered all his own passionate objections so effectually, that he embraced me and told me I treated him with such a sincerity as overcame him; that he would take my advice and would strive to submit to his fate in hope of having the comfort of so faithful a counsellor and such a companion in his misery. But still he put me in mind of what I had mentioned before, namely, that there might be some way to get off before he went and that it might be possible to avoid going at all, which he said would be much better. I told him he should see and be fully satisfied that I would do my utmost in that part too, and if it did not succeed, yet that I would make good the rest.

We parted after this long conference with such testimonies of kindness and affection as I thought were equal, if not superior, to that at our parting at Dunstable; and now I saw more plainly the reason why he then declined coming with me toward London, and why, when we parted there, he told me it was not convenient to come to London with me, as he would otherwise have done. I have observed that the account of his life would have made a much more pleasing history than this of mine; and, indeed, nothing in it was more strange than this part,
viz.
, that he carried on that desperate trade full five-and-twenty years and had never been taken; the success he had met with had been so very uncommon, and such that sometimes he had lived handsomely and retired in one place for a year or two at a time, keeping himself and a manservant to wait on him, and has often sat in the coffeehouses and heard the very people who he had robbed give accounts of their being robbed, and of the places and circumstances, so that he could easily remember that it was the same.

In this manner, it seems, he lived near Liverpool at the time he unluckily married me for a fortune. Had I been the fortune he expected, I verily believe he would have taken up and lived honestly.

He had with the rest of his misfortunes the good luck not to be actually upon the spot when the robbery was done which they were committed for, and so none of the persons robbed could swear to him. But, it seems, as he was taken with the gang, one hard-mouthed countryman swore home to him; and according to the publication they had made, they expected more evidence against him, and for that reason he was kept in hold.

However, the offer which was made to him of transportation was made, as I understood, upon the intercession of some great person who pressed him hard to accept of it; and as he knew there were several that might come in against him, I thought his friend was in the right, and I lay at him night and day to delay it no longer.

At last, with much difficulty, he gave his consent; and as he was not therefore admitted to transportation in court, and on his petition, as I was, so he found himself under a difficulty to avoid embarking himself, as I had said he might have done, his friend having given security for him that he should transport himself and not return within the term.

This hardship broke all my measures, for the steps I took afterwards for my own deliverance were hereby rendered wholly ineffectual unless I would abandon him and leave him to go to America by himself, than which he protested he would much rather go directly to the gallows.

I must now return to my own case. The time of my being transported was near at hand; my governess, who continued my fast friend, had tried to obtain a pardon, but it could not be done unless with an expense too heavy for my purse, considering that to be left empty, unless I had resolved to return to my old trade, had been worse than transportation, because there I could live, here I could not. The good minister stood very hard on another account to prevent my being transported also; but he was answered that my life had been given me at his first solicitations, and therefore he ought to ask no more. He was sensibly grieved at my going because, as he said, he feared I should lose the good impressions which a prospect of death had at first made on me and which were since increased by his instructions; and the pious gentleman was exceedingly concerned on that account.

On the other hand, I was not so solicitous about it now, but I concealed my reasons for it from the minister, and to the last he did not know but that I went with the utmost reluctance and affliction.

It was in the month of February that I was, with thirteen other convicts, delivered to a merchant that traded to Virginia, on board a ship riding in Deptford Reach. The officer of the prison delivered us on board, and the master of the vessel gave a discharge for us.

We were for that night clapped under hatches and kept so close that I thought I should have been suffocated for want of air; and the next morning the ship weighed, and fell down the river to a place called Bugby’s Hole, which was done, as they told us, by the agreement of the merchant, that all opportunity of escape should be taken from us. However, when the ship came thither and cast anchor, we were permitted to come upon the deck, but not upon the quarter-deck, that being kept particularly for the captain and for passengers.

When by the noise of the men over my head and the motion of the ship I perceived they were under sail, I was at first greatly surprised, fearing we should go away and that our friends would not be admitted to see us; but I was easy soon after, when I found they had come to an anchor, and that we had notice given by some of the men that the next morning we should have the liberty to come upon deck and to have our friends come to see us.

All that night I lay upon the hard deck as the other prisoners did, but we had afterwards little cabins allowed for such as had any bedding to lay in them, and room to stow any box or trunk for clothes, and linen if we had it (which might well be put in), for some of them had neither shirt or shift, linen or woollen, but what was on their backs, or one farthing of money to help themselves; yet I did not find but they fared well enough in the ship, especially the women, who got money of the seamen for washing their clothes, etc., sufficient to purchase anything they wanted.

When the next morning we had the liberty to come upon deck, I asked one of the officers whether I might not be allowed to send a letter on shore to let my friends know where we lay and to get some necessary things sent to me. This was the boatswain, a very civil, courteous man, who told me I should have any liberty that I desired that he could allow me with safety. I told him I desired no other; and he answered, the ship’s boat would go up to London next tide, and he would order my letter to be carried.

Accordingly, when the boat went off, the boatswain came and told me the boat was going off, that he went in it himself, and if my letter was ready, he would take care of it. I had prepared pen, ink, and paper beforehand, and had gotten a letter ready directed to my governess and enclosed another to my fellow-prisoner, which, however, I did not let her know was my husband, not to the last. In that to my governess, I let her know where the ship lay and pressed her to send me what things she had got ready for me for my voyage.

When I gave the boatswain the letter, I gave him a shilling with it, which I told him was for the charge of a porter, which I had entreated him to send with the letter as soon as he came on shore, that if possible I might have an answer brought back by the same hand, that I might know what was become of my things; “for, sir,” says I, “if the ship should go away before I have them, I am undone.”

I took care, when I gave him the shilling, to let him see I had a little better furniture about me than the ordinary prisoners; that I had a purse and in it a pretty deal of money; and I found that the very sight of it immediately furnished me with very different treatment from what I should otherwise have met with; for though he was courteous indeed before, in a kind of natural compassion to me as a woman in distress, yet he was more than ordinarily so afterwards, and procured me to be better treated in the ship than, I say, I might otherwise have been; as shall appear in its place.

He very honestly delivered my letter to my governess’ own hands and brought me back her answer; and when he gave it me, gave me the shilling again. “There,” says he, “there’s your shilling again too, for I delivered the letter myself.” I could not tell what to say, I was so surprised at the thing; but after some pause I said, “Sir, you are too kind; it had been but reasonable that you had paid yourself coach-hire, then.”

“No, no,” says he, “I am overpaid. What is that gentlewoman? Is she your sister?”

“No, sir,” said I, “she is no relation to me, but she is a dear friend, and all the friends I have in the world.” “Well,” says he, “there are few such friends. Why, she cries after you like a child.” “Aye,” says I again, “she would give a hundred pound, I believe, to deliver me from this dreadful condition.”

“Would she so?” says he. “For half the money I believe I could put you in a way how to deliver yourself.” But this he spoke softly, that nobody could hear.

“Alas! sir,” said I, “but then that must be such a deliverance as if I should be taken again would cost me my life.” “Nay,” said he, “if you were once out of the ship, you must look to yourself afterwards; that I can say nothing to.” So we dropped the discourse for that time.

In the meantime, my governess, faithful to the last moment, conveyed my letter to the prison to my husband, and got an answer to it, and the next day came down herself, bringing me, in the first place, a sea-bed, as they call it, and all its ordinary furniture. She brought me also a sea-chest—that is, a chest such as are made for seamen, with all the conveniences in it and filled with everything almost that I could want; and in one of the corners of the chest, where there was a private drawer, was my bank of money—that is to say, so much of it as I had resolved to carry with me; for I ordered part of my stock to be left behind to be sent afterwards in such goods as I should want when I came to settle; for money in that country is not of much use where all things are bought for tobacco; much more is it a great loss to carry it from hence.

But my case was particular; it was by no means proper for me to go without money or goods, and for a poor convict that was to be sold as soon as I came on shore, to carry a cargo of goods would be to have notice taken of it, and perhaps to have them seized; so I took part of my stock with me thus, and left the rest with my governess.

My governess brought me a great many other things, but it was not proper for me to appear too well, at least till I knew what kind of a captain we should have. When she came into the ship, I thought she would have died indeed; her heart sunk at the sight of me and at the thoughts of parting with me in that condition; and she cried so intolerably I could not for a long time have any talk with her.

I took that time to read my fellow-prisoner’s letter, which greatly perplexed me. He told me it would be impossible for him to be discharged time enough for going in the same ship, and which was more than all, he began to question whether they would give him leave to go in what ship he pleased, though he did voluntarily transport himself; but that they would see him put on board such a ship as they should direct, and that he would be charged upon the captain as other convict prisoners were; so that he began to be in despair of seeing me till he came to Virginia, which made him almost desperate, seeing that, on the other hand, if I should not be there, if any accident of the sea or of mortality should take me away, he should be the most undone creature in the world.