The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2)

by Daniel Defoe

something to do to comfort her.She was, as I have said, like one distracted, and went raving about thecabin, crying out she was undone! undone! she should be drowned! and thelike. And at last, the ship giving a jerk, by the force, I suppose, ofsome violent wave, it threw poor Amy quite down, for she was weak enoughbefore with being sea-sick, and as it threw her forward, the poor girlstruck her head against the bulk-head, as the seamen call it, of thecabin, and laid her as dead as a stone upon the floor or deck; that isto say, she was so to all appearance.

  I cried out for help, but it had been all one to have cried out on thetop of a mountain where nobody had been within five miles of me, for theseamen were so engaged and made so much noise that nobody heard me orcame near me. I opened the great cabin door, and looked into thesteerage to cry for help, but there, to increase my fright, was twoseamen on their knees at prayers, and only one man who steered, and hemade a groaning noise too, which I took to be saying his prayers, but itseems it was answering to those above, when they called to him to tellhim which way to steer.

  Here was no help for me, or for poor Amy, and there she lay still so,and in such a condition, that I did not know whether she was dead oralive. In this fright I went to her, and lifted her a little way up,setting her on the deck, with her back to the boards of the bulk-head;and I got a little bottle out of my pocket, and I held it to her nose,and rubbed her temples and what else I could do, but still Amy showed nosigns of life, till I felt for her pulse, but could hardly distinguishher to be alive. However, after a great while, she began to revive, andin about half-an-hour she came to herself, but remembered nothing atfirst of what had happened to her for a good while more.

  When she recovered more fully, she asked me where she was. I told hershe was in the ship yet, but God knows how long it might be. "Why,madam," says she, "is not the storm over?" "No, no," says I, "Amy.""Why, madam," says she, "it was calm just now" (meaning when she was inthe swooning fit occasioned by her fall). "Calm, Amy!" says I. "'Tis farfrom calm. It may be it will be calm by-and-by, when we are all drownedand gone to heaven."

  "Heaven, madam!" says she. "What makes you talk so? Heaven! I go toheaven! No, no; if I am drowned I am damned! Don't you know what awicked creature I have been? I have been a whore to two men, and havelived a wretched, abominable life of vice and wickedness for fourteenyears. Oh, madam! you know it, and God knows it, and now I am to die--tobe drowned! Oh! what will become of me? I am undone for ever!--ay,madam, for ever! to all eternity! Oh! I am lost! I am lost! If I amdrowned, I am lost for ever!"

  All these, you will easily suppose, must be so many stabs into the verysoul of one in my own case. It immediately occurred to me, "Poor Amy!what art thou that I am not? What hast thou been that I have not been?Nay, I am guilty of my own sin and thine too." Then it came to myremembrance that I had not only been the same with Amy, but that I hadbeen the devil's instrument to make her wicked; that I had stripped her,and prostituted her to the very man that I had been naught with myself;that she had but followed me, I had been her wicked example; and I hadled her into all; and that, as we had sinned together, now we werelikely to sink together.

  All this repeated itself to my thoughts at that very moment, and everyone of Amy's cries sounded thus in my ears: "I am the wicked cause of itall! I have been thy ruin, Amy! I have brought thee to this, and nowthou art to suffer for the sin I have enticed thee to! And if thou artlost for ever, what must I be? what must be my portion?"

  It is true this difference was between us, that I said all these thingswithin myself, and sighed and mourned inwardly; but Amy, as her temperwas more violent, spoke aloud, and cried, and called out aloud, like onein agony.

  I had but small encouragement to give her, and indeed could say but verylittle, but I got her to compose herself a little, and not let any ofthe people of the ship understand what she meant or what she said; buteven in her greatest composure she continued to express herself with theutmost dread and terror on account of the wicked life she had lived,crying out she should be damned, and the like, which was very terribleto me, who knew what condition I was in myself.

  Upon these serious considerations, I was very penitent too for my formersins, and cried out, though softly, two or three times, "Lord, havemercy upon me!" To this I added abundance of resolutions of what a lifeI would live if it should please God but to spare my life but this onetime; how I would live a single and a virtuous life, and spend a greatdeal of what I had thus wickedly got in acts of charity and doing good.

  Under these dreadful apprehensions I looked back on the life I had ledwith the utmost contempt and abhorrence. I blushed, and wondered atmyself how I could act thus, how I could divest myself of modesty andhonour, and prostitute myself for gain; and I thought, if ever it shouldplease God to spare me this one time from death, it would not bepossible that I should be the same creature again.

  Amy went farther; she prayed, she resolved, she vowed to lead a newlife, if God would spare her but this time. It now began to be daylight,for the storm held all night long, and it was some comfort to see thelight of another day, which none of us expected; but the sea wentmountains high, and the noise of the water was as frightful to us as thesight of the waves; nor was any land to be seen, nor did the seamen knowwhereabout they were. At last, to our great joy, they made land, whichwas in England, and on the coast of Suffolk; and the ship being in theutmost distress, they ran for the shore at all hazards, and with greatdifficulty got into Harwich, where they were safe, as to the danger ofdeath; but the ship was so full of water and so much damaged that ifthey had not laid her on shore the same day she would have sunk beforenight, according to the opinion of the seamen, and of the workmen onshore too who were hired to assist them in stopping their leaks.

  Amy was revived as soon as she heard they had espied land, and went outupon the deck; but she soon came in again to me. "Oh, madam!" says she,"there's the land indeed to be seen. It looks like a ridge of clouds,and may be all a cloud for aught I know; but if it be land, 'tis agreat way off, and the sea is in such a combustion, we shall all perishbefore we can reach it. 'Tis the dreadfullest sight to look at thewaves that ever was seen. Why, they are as high as mountains; we shallcertainly be all swallowed up, for all the land is so near."

  I had conceived some hope that, if they saw land, we should bedelivered; and I told her she did not understand things of that nature;that she might be sure if they saw land they would go directly towardsit, and would make into some harbour; but it was, as Amy said, afrightful distance to it. The land looked like clouds, and the sea wentas high as mountains, so that no hope appeared in the seeing the land,but we were in fear of foundering before we could reach it. This madeAmy so desponding still; but as the wind, which blew from the east, orthat way, drove us furiously towards the land, so when, abouthalf-an-hour after, I stepped to the steerage-door and looked out, I sawthe land much nearer than Amy represented it; so I went in andencouraged Amy again, and indeed was encouraged myself.

  In about an hour, or something more, we saw, to our infinitesatisfaction, the open harbour of Harwich, and the vessel standingdirectly towards it, and in a few minutes more the ship was in smoothwater, to our inexpressible comfort; and thus I had, though against mywill and contrary to my true interest, what I wished for, to be drivenaway to England, though it was by a storm.

  Nor did this incident do either Amy or me much service, for, the dangerbeing over, the fears of death vanished with it; ay, and our fear ofwhat was beyond death also. Our sense of the life we had lived went off,and with our return to life our wicked taste of life returned, and wewere both the same as before, if not worse. So certain is it that therepentance which is brought about by the mere apprehensions of deathwears off as those apprehensions wear off, and deathbed repentance, orstorm repentance, which is much the same, is seldom true.

  However, I do not tell you that this was all at once neither; the frightwe had at sea lasted a little while afterwards; at least the impressionwas not quite blown off as soon as the storm; especially poo
r Amy. Assoon as she set her foot on shore she fell flat upon the ground andkissed it, and gave God thanks for her deliverance from the sea; andturning to me when she got up, "I hope, madam," says she, "you willnever go upon the sea again."

  I know not what ailed me, not I; but Amy was much more penitent at sea,and much more sensible of her deliverance when she landed and was safe,than I was. I was in a kind of stupidity, I know not well what to callit; I had a mind full of horror in the time of the storm, and saw deathbefore me as plainly as Amy, but my thoughts got no vent, as Amy's did.I had a silent, sullen kind of grief, which could not break out eitherin words or tears, and which was therefore much the worse to bear.

  I had a terror upon me for my wicked life past, and firmly believed Iwas going to the bottom, launching into death, where I was