as persons who were of particular use tous upon many occasions; nor were they always unwilling to go with us,though for their own security, in case of accidents, they might easilypretend they were carried away by force; of which I shall give apleasant account in the course of my other expeditions.
We had one very merry fellow here, a Quaker, whose name was WilliamWalters, whom we took out of a sloop bound from Pennsylvania toBarbados. He was a surgeon, and they called him doctor; but he was notemployed in the sloop as a surgeon, but was going to Barbados to get aberth, as the sailors call it. However, he had all his surgeon's chestson board, and we made him go with us, and take all his implements withhim. He was a comic fellow indeed, a man of very good solid sense, andan excellent surgeon; but, what was worth all, very good-humoured andpleasant in his conversation, and a bold, stout, brave fellow too, asany we had among us.
I found William, as I thought, not very averse to go along with us, andyet resolved to do it so that it might be apparent he was taken awayby force, and to this purpose he comes to me. "Friend," says he, "thousayest I must go with thee, and it is not in my power to resist thee ifI would; but I desire thou wilt oblige the master of the sloop which Iam on board to certify under his hand, that I was taken away by forceand against my will." And this he said with so much satisfaction in hisface, that I could not but understand him. "Ay, ay," says I, "whetherit be against your will or no, I'll make him and all the men give youa certificate of it, or I'll take them all along with us, and keep themtill they do." So I drew up a certificate myself, wherein I wrote thathe was taken away by main force, as a prisoner, by a pirate ship; thatthey carried away his chest and instruments first, and then bound hishands behind him and forced him into their boat; and this was signed bythe master and all his men.
Accordingly I fell a-swearing at him, and called to my men to tie hishands behind him, and so we put him into our boat and carried him away.When I had him on board, I called him to me. "Now, friend," says I, "Ihave brought you away by force, it is true, but I am not of the opinionI have brought you away so much against your will as they imagine.Come," says I, "you will be a useful man to us, and you shall have verygood usage among us." So I unbound his hands, and first ordered allthings that belonged to him to be restored to him, and our captain gavehim a dram.
"Thou hast dealt friendly by me," says he, "and I will be plain withthee, whether I came willingly to thee or not. I shall make myselfas useful to thee as I can, but thou knowest it is not my business tomeddle when thou art to fight." "No, no," says the captain, "but you maymeddle a little when we share the money." "Those things are useful tofurnish a surgeon's chest," says William, and smiled, "but I shall bemoderate."
In short, William was a most agreeable companion; but he had the betterof us in this part, that if we were taken we were sure to be hanged, andhe was sure to escape; and he knew it well enough. But, in short, hewas a sprightly fellow, and fitter to be captain than any of us. I shallhave often an occasion to speak of him in the rest of the story.
Our cruising so long in these seas began now to be so well known, thatnot in England only, but in France and Spain, accounts had been madepublic of our adventures, and many stories told how we murdered thepeople in cold blood, tying them back to back, and throwing them intothe sea; one half of which, however, was not true, though more was donethan is fit to speak of here.
The consequence of this, however, was, that several English men-of-warwere sent to the West Indies, and were particularly instructed to cruisein the Bay of Mexico, and the Gulf of Florida, and among the Bahamaislands, if possible, to attack us. We were not so ignorant of things asnot to expect this, after so long a stay in that part of the world; butthe first certain account we had of them was at Honduras, when a vesselcoming in from Jamaica told us that two English men-of-war were comingdirectly from Jamaica thither in quest of us. We were indeed as it wereembayed, and could not have made the least shift to have got off, ifthey had come directly to us; but, as it happened, somebody had informedthem that we were in the Bay of Campeachy, and they went directlythither, by which we were not only free of them, but were so much to thewindward of them, that they could not make any attempt upon us, thoughthey had known we were there.
We took this advantage, and stood away for Carthagena, and from thencewith great difficulty beat it up at a distance from under the shore forSt. Martha, till we came to the Dutch island of Curacoa, and from thenceto the island of Tobago, which, as before, was our rendezvous; which,being a deserted, uninhabited island, we at the same time made use offor a retreat. Here the captain of the brigantine died, and CaptainHarris, at that time my lieutenant, took the command of the brigantine.
Here we came to a resolution to go away to the coast of Brazil, and fromthence to the Cape of Good Hope, and so for the East Indies; but CaptainHarris, as I have said, being now captain of the brigantine, allegedthat his ship was too small for so long a voyage, but that, if CaptainWilmot would consent, he would take the hazard of another cruise, andhe would follow us in the first ship he could take. So we appointed ourrendezvous to be at Madagascar, which was done by my recommendation ofthe place, and the plenty of provisions to be had there.
Accordingly, he went away from us in an evil hour; for, instead oftaking a ship to follow us, he was taken, as I heard afterwards, byan English man-of-war, and being laid in irons, died of mere griefand anger before he came to England. His lieutenant, I have heard, wasafterwards executed in England for a pirate; and this was the end of theman who first brought me into this unhappy trade.
We parted from Tobago three days after, bending our course for the coastof Brazil, but had not been at sea above twenty-four hours, when we wereseparated by a terrible storm, which held three days, with very littleabatement or intermission. In this juncture Captain Wilmot happened,unluckily, to be on board my ship, to his great mortification; for wenot only lost sight of his ship, but never saw her more till we cameto Madagascar, where she was cast away. In short, after having in thistempest lost our fore-topmast, we were forced to put back to the isle ofTobago for shelter, and to repair our damage, which brought us all verynear our destruction.
We were no sooner on shore here, and all very busy looking out for apiece of timber for a topmast, but we perceived standing in for theshore an English man-of-war of thirty-six guns. It was a great surpriseto us indeed, because we were disabled so much; but, to our great goodfortune, we lay pretty snug and close among the high rocks, and theman-of-war did not see us, but stood off again upon his cruise. Sowe only observed which way she went, and at night, leaving our work,resolved to stand off to sea, steering the contrary way from that whichwe observed she went; and this, we found, had the desired success, forwe saw him no more. We had gotten an old mizzen-topmast on board, whichmade us a jury fore-topmast for the present; and so we stood away forthe isle of Trinidad, where, though there were Spaniards on shore, yetwe landed some men with our boat, and cut a very good piece of fir tomake us a new topmast, which we got fitted up effectually; and also wegot some cattle here to eke out our provisions; and calling a council ofwar among ourselves, we resolved to quit those seas for the present, andsteer away for the coast of Brazil.
The first thing we attempted here was only getting fresh water, but welearnt that there lay the Portuguese fleet at the bay of All Saints,bound for Lisbon, ready to sail, and only waited for a fair wind. Thismade us lie by, wishing to see them put to sea, and, accordingly as theywere with or without convoy, to attack or avoid them.
It sprung up a fresh gale in the evening at S.W. by W., which, beingfair for the Portugal fleet, and the weather pleasant and agreeable,we heard the signal given to unmoor, and running in under the island ofSi---, we hauled our mainsail and foresail up in the brails, lowered thetopsails upon the cap, and clewed them up, that we might lie as snug aswe could, expecting their coming out, and the next morning saw the wholefleet come out accordingly, but not at all to our satisfaction, for theyconsisted of twenty-six sail, and most of them ships of force, as wellas
burthen, both merchantmen and men-of-war; so, seeing there was nomeddling, we lay still where we were also, till the fleet was out ofsight, and then stood off and on, in hopes of meeting with furtherpurchase.
It was not long before we saw a sail, and immediately gave her chase;but she proved an excellent sailer, and, standing out to sea, we sawplainly she trusted to her heels--that is to say, to her sails. However,as we were a clean ship, we gained upon her, though slowly, and had wehad a day before us, we should certainly have come up with her; but itgrew dark apace, and in that case we knew we should lose sight of her.
Our merry Quaker, perceiving us to crowd still after her in the dark,wherein we could not see which way she went, came very dryly to me."Friend Singleton," says he, "dost thee know what we are a-doing?" SaysI, "Yes; why, we are chasing yon ship, are we