Daniel Defoe

“ Amy went further. She prayed, she resolved, she vowed to lead a new life if God would spare her but this time. It now began to be daylight, for the storm held all night long, and it was some comfort to see the light of another day, which indeed none of us expected; but the sea went mountains high, and the noise of the water was as frightful to us as the sight of the waves; nor was any land to be seen, nor did the seamen know whereabout they were. At last, to our great joy, they made land, which was in England and on the coast of Suffolk ”

“ While the vice rages and the man is in the devil’s hand, she has him, and while she has him she makes a prey of him; but if he happen to fall sick, if any disaster befall him, the cause of all lies upon her, he is sure to lay all his misfortunes at her door; and if once he comes to repentance or makes one step towards a reformation, he begins with her, leaves her, uses her as she deserves, hates her, abhors her, and sees her no more. ”

“ So certain is it that the repentance which is brought about by the mere apprehensions of death wears off as those apprehensions wear off, and death-bed repentance, or storm repentance, which is much the same, is seldom true.
However, I do not tell you that this was all at once neither. The fright we had at sea lasted a little while afterwards, at least the impression was not quite blown off as soon as the storm; especially poor Amy, as soon as she set her foot on shore, she fell flat upon the ground and kissed it, and gave God thanks for her deliverance from the sea ”

“ That there was once a poor girl that went over with her mistress, whose husband was a ——r in —— in the city of London, who confessed in the terror of a storm that she had lain with her master and all the apprentices so often, and in such and such places, and made the poor mistress, when she returned to London, fly at her husband and make such a stir as was indeed the ruin of the whole family. Amy could bear all that well enough, for though she had indeed lain with her master, it was with her mistress’s knowledge and consent, and, which was worse, was her mistress’s own doing. ”

“ The whore skulks about in lodgings, is visited in the dark, disowned upon all occasions before God and man, is maintained indeed for a time, but is certainly condemned to be abandoned at last, and left to the miseries of fate and her own just disaster. If she has any children her endeavour is to get rid of them and not maintain them, and if she lives she is certain to see them all hate her and be ashamed of her. ”

“ And that with this never-failing addition, namely, that the more sincere and unfeigned his repentance is, the more earnestly he looks up, and the more effectually he looks in, the more his aversion to her increases, and he curses her from the bottom of his soul ”

“ To this I added abundance of resolutions of what a life I would live if it should please God but to spare my life but this one time; how I would live but a single and a virtuous life, and spend a great deal of what I had thus wickedly got in acts of charity and doing good. ”

“ He got out of jail in a little while, though not without the help of money, and continued teasing the merchant a long while; and at last threatening to assassinate and murder him, so the merchant, who having buried his wife about two months before was now a single man, and not knowing what such a villain might do, thought fit to quit Paris, and came away to Holland also. ”

“ But the ship was so full of water and so much damaged, that if they had not laid her on shore the same day she would have sunk before night, according to the opinion of the seamen, and of the workmen on shore too who were hired to assist them in stopping their leaks.
Amy was revived as soon as she heard they had espied land, and went out upon the deck, but she soon came in again to me. “Oh, madam,” says she, “there’s the land indeed to be seen; it looks like a ridge of clouds, and may be all a cloud for aught I know, but if it be land ’tis a great way off ”