On this narrow escape from death, Meff was full of many penitent resolutions, and determined with himself to follow for the future an honest course of life, however hard and laborious, as persons are generally inclined to believe all works in the plantations are.  Yet no sooner was he at liberty (that is, on board the transport vessel, where he found means to make the master his friend) than much of these honest intentions were dissolved and laid aside, to which perhaps the behaviour of his companions and of the seamen on board the ship, did not a little contribute.  At first their passage was easy, the wind fair and prosperous.  They began to comfort one another with the hopes of living easily in the Plantations, greedily enquiring of the seamen how persons in their unhappy condition were treated by their masters, and whether all the terrible relations they had had in England were really facts, or invented only to terrify those who were to undergo that punishment.

But while these unhappy persons were thus amusing themselves a new and unlooked for misfortune fell upon them, for in the height of Bermuda they were surprised by two pirate sloops, who though they found no considerable booty on board, were very well satisfied by the great addition they made to their force, from most of those felons joining with them in their piratical undertakings.  Meff, however, and eight others, absolutely refused to sign the paper which contained the pirate’s engagement and articles for better pursuing their designs.  These nine were, according to the barbarous practice of those kind of people, marooned, that is, set on shore on an uninhabited island.  According to the custom of the people in such distress, they were obliged to rub two dry sticks together till they took fire, and with great difficulty gathered as many other sticks as made a fire large enough to yield them some relief from the inclemency of the weather.  They caught some fowls with springes made of an old horsehair wig, which were very tough and of a fishy taste, but after three or four days, they became acquainted with the springes and were never afterwards to be taken by that means.  Their next resource for food was an animal which burrowed in the ground like our rabbits, but the flesh of these proving unwholesome, threw them into such dangerous fluxes that five out of the nine were scarce able to go.  They were then forced to take up with such fish as they were able to catch, and even these were not only very rank and unpleasant, but very small also, and no great plenty of them either.

At last, when they almost despaired of ever getting off that inhospitable island, they espied early one morning an Indian canoe come on shore with seven persons.  They hid themselves behind the rocks as carefully as they could, and the Indians being gone up into the heart of the island, they went down and finding much salt provisions in the boat, they trusted themselves to the mercy of the waves.