CHAPTER TEN

Sea-adventures very new and surprising.

When they arrived at Harwich they found a vessel, which had put in there, just ready to depart for Rotterdam.  So they went immediately on board, and sailed with a fair wind; but they had hardly proceeded out of sight of land when a sudden and violent storm arose and drove them to the southwest; insomuch that the captain apprehended it impossible to avoid the Goodwin Sands, and he and all his crew gave themselves up for lost.  Mrs. Heartfree, who had no other apprehensions from death but those of leaving her dear husband and children, fell on her knees to beseech the Almighty’s favour, when Wild, with a contempt of danger truly great, took a resolution as worthy to be admired perhaps as any recorded of the bravest hero, ancient or modern; a resolution which plainly proved him to have these two qualifications so necessary to a hero, to be superior to all the energies of fear or pity.  He saw the tyrant death ready to rescue from him his intended prey, which he had yet devoured only in imagination.  He therefore swore he would prevent him, and immediately attacked the poor wretch, who was in the utmost agonies of despair, first with solicitation, and afterwards with force.

Mrs. Heartfree, the moment she understood his meaning, which, in her present temper of mind, and in the opinion she held of him, she did not immediately, rejected him with all the repulses which indignation and horror could animate:  but when he attempted violence she filled the cabin with her shrieks, which were so vehement that they reached the ears of the captain, the storm at this time luckily abating.  This man, who was a brute rather from his education and the element he inhabited than from nature, ran hastily down to her assistance, and, finding her struggling on the ground with our hero, he presently rescued her from her intended ravisher, who was soon obliged to quit the woman, in order to engage with her lusty champion, who spared neither pains nor blows in the assistance of his fair passenger.

When the short battle was over, in which our hero, had he not been overpowered with numbers, who came down on their captain’s side, would have been victorious, the captain rapped out a hearty oath, and asked Wild, if he had no more Christianity in him than to ravish a woman in a storm?  To which the other greatly and sullenly answered, “It was very well; but d—­n him if he had not satisfaction the moment they came on shore.”  The captain with great scorn replied, “Kiss,—–­” &c., and then, forcing Wild out of the cabbin, he, at Mrs. Heartfree’s request, locked her into it, and returned to the care of his ship.