about it, and yet it may be so, for anything which I know to the contrary.  If there should be another world it will go hard with me, that is certain.  I shall never escape for what I have done to Heartfree.  The devil must have me for that undoubtedly.  The devil!  Pshaw!  I am not such a fool to be frightened at him neither.  No, no; when a man’s dead there’s an end of him.  I wish I was certainly satisfied of it though:  for there are some men of learning, as I have heard, of a different opinion.  It is but a bad chance, methinks, I stand.  If there be no other world, why I shall be in no worse condition than a block or a stone:  but if there should——­d—­n me I will think no longer about it.—­Let a pack of cowardly rascals be afraid of death, I dare look him in the face.  But shall I stay and be starved?—­No, I will eat up the biscuits the French son of a whore bestowed on me, and then leap into the sea for drink, since the unconscionable dog hath not allowed me a single dram.”  Having thus said, he proceeded immediately to put his purpose in execution, and, as his resolution never failed him, he had no sooner despatched the small quantity of provision which his enemy had with no vast liberality presented him, than he cast himself headlong into the sea.

CHAPTER TWELVE

The strange and yet natural escape of our hero.

Our hero, having with wonderful resolution thrown himself into the sea, as we mentioned at the end of the last chapter, was miraculously within two minutes after replaced in his boat; and this without the assistance of a dolphin or a seahorse, or any other fish or animal, who are always as ready at hand when a poet or historian pleases to call for them to carry a hero through the sea, as any chairman at a coffee-house door near St. James’s to convey a beau over a street, and preserve his white stockings.  The truth is, we do not chuse to have any recourse to miracles, from the strict observance we pay to that rule of Horace,

  Nec Deus intersit, nisi dignus vindice nodus.

The meaning of which is, do not bring in a supernatural agent when you can do without him; and indeed we are much deeper read in natural than supernatural causes.  We will therefore endeavour to account for this extraordinary event from the former of these; and in doing this it will be necessary to disclose some profound secrets to our reader, extremely well worth his knowing, and which may serve him to account for many occurrences of the phenomenous kind which have formerly appeared in this our hemisphere.

Be it known then that the great Alma Mater, Nature, is of all other females the most obstinate, and tenacious of her purpose.  So true is that observation,

  Naturam expellas furca licet, usque recurret.