He found means to get into gentlemen’s service, and lived in them with tolerable reputation and credit for the space of several years.  At last he was resolved to go to sea again, but he had so unconquerable an aversion to his own trade that he chose rather going in the capacity of a trumpeter, having learnt how to play on that instrument at one of his services.  He sailed on board the Salisbury, in that expedition Sir George Byng made to the Straits of Messina, when he attacked and destroyed the Spanish Fleet.[39] There Peter had the good luck to escape without any hurt, though there were many killed and wounded on board that ship.  He afterwards served in a regiment of dragoons, where by prudent management he saved no less than fourscore pounds.  With this he certainly had it in his power to have put himself in some way of doing well, but he omitted it, and falling into the company of a lewd woman, she persuaded him to take lodgings with her, and they lived together for some space as man and wife.

During this time he made a shift to be bound for one of his companions, for a very considerable sum, which the other had the honesty to leave him to pay.  The creditor, upon information that Curtis was packing up his awls[40] to go to sea, resolved to secure him for his debt.  But not being able to catch him upon a writ, he made up a felonious charge against him, and having thereupon got him committed to the Poultry Compter, as soon as the Justice had discharged him, he got him taken for the debt, and recommitted to the same place.  Here he was soon reduced to a very melancholy condition, having neither necessaries of life not any prospect of a release.  The wretched company with which such prisons are always full, corrupted him as to his honesty, and taught him first to think of making himself rich by taking away the properties of others.

When he came out of prison, upon an agreement with his creditor, he soon got into service with Mr. Fluellen Aspley, a very eminent chinaman by Stocks Market.[41] When he was there, the bad woman with whom he still conversed, was continually dunning his ears with how easy a matter it was for him to make himself and her rich and easy by pilfering from his master, telling him that she and her friends in the country would help him off with a thousand pounds worth of china, if need were, and baiting him continually, not to lose such an opportunity of enriching them.  The fellow himself was averse to such practices, and nothing but her continual teasing could have induced him ever to have entertained a design of so base a nature.