“I now passed several days pretty free from the captain’s molestation, till one fatal night.”  Here, perceiving Heartfree grew pale, she comforted him by an assurance that Heaven had preserved her chastity, and again had restored her unsullied to his arms.  She continued thus:  “Perhaps I give it a wrong epithet in the word fatal; but a wretched night I am sure I may call it, for no woman who came off victorious was, I believe, ever in greater danger.  One night I say, having drank his spirits high with punch, in company with the purser, who was the only man in the ship he admitted to his table, the captain sent for me into his cabin; whither, though unwilling, I was obliged to go.  We were no sooner alone together than he seized me by the hand, and, after affronting my ears with discourse which I am unable to repeat, he swore a great oath that his passion was to be dallied with no longer; that I must not expect to treat him in the manner to which a set of blockhead land-men submitted.  ’None of your coquette airs, therefore, with me, madam,’ said he, ’for I am resolved to have you this night.  No struggling nor squalling, for both will be impertinent.  The first man who offers to come in here, I will have his skin flea’d off at the gangway.’  He then attempted to pull me violently towards his bed.  I threw myself on my knees, and with tears and entreaties besought his compassion; but this was, I found, to no purpose:  I then had recourse to threats, and endeavoured to frighten him with the consequence; but neither had this, though it seemed to stagger him more than the other method, sufficient force to deliver me.  At last a stratagem came into my head, of which my perceiving him reel gave me the first hint.  I entreated a moment’s reprieve only, when, collecting all the spirits I could muster, I put on a constrained air of gayety, and told him, with an affected laugh, he was the roughest lover I had ever met with, and that I believed I was the first woman he had ever paid his addresses to.  Addresses, said he; d—­n your dresses!  I want to undress you.  I then begged him to let us drink some punch together; for that I loved a can as well as himself, and never would grant the favour to any man till I had drank a hearty glass with him.  O! said he, if that be all you shall have punch enough to drown yourself in.  At which words he rung the bell, and ordered in a gallon of that liquor.  I was in the meantime obliged to suffer his nauseous kisses, and some rudenesses which I had great difficulty to restrain within moderate bounds.  When the punch came in he took up the bowl and drank my health ostentatiously, in such a quantity that it considerably advanced my scheme.  I followed him with bumpers as fast as possible, and was myself obliged to drink so much that at another time it would have staggered my own reason, but at present it did not affect me.  At length, perceiving him very far gone, I watched an opportunity, and ran out of the cabin, resolving