June 27. The ague again so violent that I lay a-bed all day, and neither ate nor drank.  I was ready to perish for thirst; but so weak, I had not strength to stand up, or to get myself any water to drink.  Prayed to God again, but was light-headed:  and when I was not, I was so ignorant that I knew not what to say; only lay and cried, “Lord, look upon me!  Lord, pity me!  Lord, have mercy upon me!” I suppose I did nothing else for two or three hours; till the fit wearing off, I fell asleep, and did not wake till far in the night.  When I awoke, I found myself much refreshed, but weak, and exceeding thirsty:  however, as I had no water in my whole habitation, I was forced to lie till morning, and went to sleep again.  In this second sleep I had this terrible dream:  I thought that I was sitting on the ground, on the outside of my wall, where I sat when the storm blew after the earthquake, and that I saw a man descend from a great black cloud, in a bright flame of fire, and light upon the ground:  he was all over as bright as a flame, so that I could but just bear to look towards him:  his countenance was most inexpressibly dreadful, impossible for words to describe:  when he stepped upon the ground with his feet, I thought the earth trembled, just as it had done before in the earthquake; and all the air looked, to my apprehension, as if it had been filled with flashes of fire.  He had no sooner landed upon the earth, but he moved forward towards me, with a long spear or weapon in his hand, to kill me; and when he came to a rising ground, at some distance, he spoke to me, or I heard a voice so terrible that it is impossible to express the terror of it:  all that I can say I understood, was this:  “Seeing all these things have not brought thee to repentance, now thou shalt die;” at which words I thought he lifted up the spear that was in his hand, to kill me.

No one that shall ever read this account, will expect that I should be able to describe the horrors of my soul at this terrible vision; I mean, that even while it was a dream, I even dreamed of those horrors; nor is it any more possible to describe the impression that remained upon my mind when I awaked, and found it was but a dream.

I had, alas! no divine knowledge:  what I had received by the good instruction of my father was then worn out, by an uninterrupted series, for eight years, of seafaring wickedness, and a constant conversation with none but such as were, like myself, wicked and profane to the last degree.  I do not remember that I had, in all that time, one thought that so much as tended either to looking upward towards God, or inward towards a reflection upon my own ways:  but a certain stupidity of soul, without desire of good, or consciousness of evil, had entirely overwhelmed me; and I was all that the most hardened, unthinking, wicked creature among our common sailors, can be supposed to be; not having the least sense, either of the fear of God, in danger, or of thankfulness to him, in deliverances.