In which the narrator recounts the early tribulations of his childhood, including abduction, a wandering life among gipsies, and eventual introduction to the sea through a kindly shipmaster, whose death leads him into strange service aboard a Portuguese vessel bound for distant Indies. Throughout this voyage, he gains a harsh education in deceit and cunning amidst a crew whose moral failings and cowardice evoke his deep aversion, yet his youth and circumstances bind him tightly to their fate.