However, the offer which was made to him of admitting him to
transportation was made, as I understood, upon the intercession of some
great person who pressed him hard to accept of it before a trial; and
indeed, 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 great friend, who was his
intercessor for the favour of that grant, 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 venture, although he were
certain to go directly to the gallows.
I must now return to my case. The time of my being transported
according to my sentence 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 naked and empty, unless I had resolved to return to my old trade
again, had been worse than my transportation, because there I knew 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 indeed 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 about me on that account.
On the other hand, I really was not so solicitous about it as I was
before, but I industriously 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 seven other convicts,
as they called us, delivered to a merchant that traded to Virginia, on
board a ship, riding, as they called it, in Deptford Reach. The
officer of the prison delivered us on board, and the master of the
vessel gave a discharge for us.