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The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders

Page 79

I came away for England in the month of August, after I had been eight

years in that country; and now a new scene of misfortunes attended me,

which perhaps few women have gone through the life of.

We had an indifferent good voyage till we came just upon the coast of

England, and where we arrived in two-and-thirty days, but were then

ruffled with two or three storms, one of which drove us away to the

coast of Ireland, and we put in at Kinsdale. We remained there about

thirteen days, got some refreshment on shore, and put to sea again,

though we met with very bad weather again, in which the ship sprung her

mainmast, as they called it, for I knew not what they meant. But we

got at last into Milford Haven, in Wales, where, though it was remote

from our port, yet having my foot safe upon the firm ground of my

native country, the isle of Britain, I resolved to venture it no more

upon the waters, which had been so terrible to me; so getting my

clothes and money on shore, with my bills of loading and other papers,

I resolved to come for London, and leave the ship to get to her port as

she could; the port whither she was bound was to Bristol, where my

brother's chief correspondent lived.

I got to London in about three weeks, where I heard a little while

after that the ship was arrived in Bristol, but at the same time had

the misfortune to know that by the violent weather she had been in, and

the breaking of her mainmast, she had great damage on board, and that a

great part of her cargo was spoiled.

I had now a new scene of life upon my hands, and a dreadful appearance

it had. I was come away with a kind of final farewell. What I brought

with me was indeed considerable, had it come safe, and by the help of

it, I might have married again tolerably well; but as it was, I was

reduced to between two or three hundred pounds in the whole, and this

without any hope of recruit. I was entirely without friends, nay, even

so much as without acquaintance, for I found it was absolutely

necessary not to revive former acquaintances; and as for my subtle

friend that set me up formerly for a fortune, she was dead, and her

husband also; as I was informed, upon sending a person unknown to

inquire.

The looking after my cargo of goods soon after obliged me to take a

journey to Bristol, and during my attendance upon that affair I took

the diversion of going to the Bath, for as I was still far from being

old, so my humour, which was always gay, continued so to an extreme;

and being now, as it were, a woman of fortune though I was a woman

without a fortune, I expected something or other might happen in my way

that might mend my circumstances, as had been my case before.

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