We had scarcely been two months married when my husband, whom I loved more and more every day, got, by the influence of powerful friends, the command of a large vessel--the _Griffin_--engaged in the trade to India. It was arranged that I should accompany him, that, as we had been associated from our earliest infancy, (our separation had been only that of the body, and interfered not with the union of the immaterial essence), we should still be together. In this resolution I rejoiced; and, though by nature a coward, my love overcame all my terrors of the great deep. The day was fixed for our departure. A lady passenger and two servants were to go with us to the Cape, from whose society I expected pleasure; and every preparation which love could suggest was made to render me happy. We left the Downs on a calm day of December, and went down the Channel with a rattling gale from the north. Life on board of an Indiaman has been a thousand times described; and, would to heaven I had nothing to detail but the ordinary conduct of civilized men! Our chief officer was one Crawley, and our second a person of the name of Buist--the only individual my husband had no confidence in being Hans Kreutz, the steward, a German, who was whispered to have been engaged as a maritime venatic, or pirate, in the West Indies: and, if any man's character might be detected in his countenance, this foreigner's disposition might have been read in lineaments marked by the graver of passion. Part of what I have now said may have been the result of after experience; yet I could perceive shadowings of evil at this time, which I had not the knowledge of human nature to enable me to turn to any account.