The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders

However, the offer which was made to him of admitting him to

transportation was made, as I understood, upon the intercession of some

great person who pressed him hard to accept of it before a trial; and

indeed, as he knew there were several that might come in against him, I

thought his friend was in the right, and I lay at him night and day to

delay it no longer.

At last, with much difficulty, he gave his consent; and as he was not

therefore admitted to transportation in court, and on his petition, as

I was, so he found himself under a difficulty to avoid embarking

himself as I had said he might have done; his great friend, who was his

intercessor for the favour of that grant, having given security for him

that he should transport himself, and not return within the term.

This hardship broke all my measures, for the steps I took afterwards

for my own deliverance were hereby rendered wholly ineffectual, unless

I would abandon him, and leave him to go to America by himself; than

which he protested he would much rather venture, although he were

certain to go directly to the gallows.

I must now return to my case. The time of my being transported

according to my sentence was near at hand; my governess, who continued

my fast friend, had tried to obtain a pardon, but it could not be done

unless with an expense too heavy for my purse, considering that to be

left naked and empty, unless I had resolved to return to my old trade

again, had been worse than my transportation, because there I knew I

could live, here I could not. The good minister stood very hard on

another account to prevent my being transported also; but he was

answered, that indeed my life had been given me at his first

solicitations, and therefore he ought to ask no more. He was sensibly

grieved at my going, because, as he said, he feared I should lose the

good impressions which a prospect of death had at first made on me, and

which were since increased by his instructions; and the pious gentleman

was exceedingly concerned about me on that account.

On the other hand, I really was not so solicitous about it as I was

before, but I industriously concealed my reasons for it from the

minister, and to the last he did not know but that I went with the

utmost reluctance and affliction.

It was in the month of February that I was, with seven other convicts,

as they called us, delivered to a merchant that traded to Virginia, on

board a ship, riding, as they called it, in Deptford Reach. The

officer of the prison delivered us on board, and the master of the

vessel gave a discharge for us.