CHAPTER XVIII--THE SHIP RECOVERED
While we were thus preparing our designs, and had first, by mainstrength, heaved the boat upon the beach, so high that the tide would notfloat her off at high-water mark, and besides, had broke a hole in herbottom too big to be quickly stopped, and were set down musing what weshould do, we heard the ship fire a gun, and make a waft with her ensignas a signal for the boat to come on board--but no boat stirred; and theyfired several times, making other signals for the boat. At last, whenall their signals and firing proved fruitless, and they found the boatdid not stir, we saw them, by the help of my glasses, hoist another boatout and row towards the shore; and we found, as they approached, thatthere were no less than ten men in her, and that they had firearms withthem.
As the ship lay almost two leagues from the shore, we had a full view ofthem as they came, and a plain sight even of their faces; because thetide having set them a little to the east of the other boat, they rowedup under shore, to come to the same place where the other had landed, andwhere the boat lay; by this means, I say, we had a full view of them, andthe captain knew the persons and characters of all the men in the boat,of whom, he said, there were three very honest fellows, who, he was sure,were led into this conspiracy by the rest, being over-powered andfrightened; but that as for the boatswain, who it seems was the chiefofficer among them, and all the rest, they were as outrageous as any ofthe ship's crew, and were no doubt made desperate in their newenterprise; and terribly apprehensive he was that they would be toopowerful for us. I smiled at him, and told him that men in ourcircumstances were past the operation of fear; that seeing almost everycondition that could be was better than that which we were supposed to bein, we ought to expect that the consequence, whether death or life, wouldbe sure to be a deliverance. I asked him what he thought of thecircumstances of my life, and whether a deliverance were not worthventuring for? "And where, sir," said I, "is your belief of my beingpreserved here on purpose to save your life, which elevated you a littlewhile ago? For my part," said I, "there seems to be but one thing amissin all the prospect of it." "What is that?" say he. "Why," said I, "itis, that as you say there are three or four honest fellows among themwhich should be spared, had they been all of the wicked part of the crewI should have thought God's providence had singled them out to deliverthem into your hands; for depend upon it, every man that comes ashore isour own, and shall die or live as they behave to us." As I spoke thiswith a raised voice and cheerful countenance, I found it greatlyencouraged him; so we set vigorously to our business.
We had, upon the first appearance of the boat's coming from the ship,considered of separating our prisoners; and we had, indeed, secured themeffectually. Two of them, of whom the captain was less assured thanordinary, I sent with Friday, and one of the three delivered men, to mycave, where they were remote enough, and out of danger of being heard ordiscovered, or of finding their way out of the woods if they could havedelivered themselves. Here they left them bound, but gave themprovisions; and promised them, if they continued there quietly, to givethem their liberty in a day or two; but that if they attempted theirescape they should be put to death without mercy. They promisedfaithfully to bear their confinement with patience, and were verythankful that they had such good usage as to have provisions and lightleft them; for Friday gave them candles (such as we made ourselves) fortheir comfort; and they did not know but that he stood sentinel over themat the entrance.
The other prisoners had better usage; two of them were kept pinioned,indeed, because the captain was not able to trust them; but the other twowere taken into my service, upon the captain's recommendation, and upontheir solemnly engaging to live and die with us; so with them and thethree honest men we were seven men, well armed; and I made no doubt weshould be able to deal well enough with the ten that were coming,considering that the captain had said there were three or four honest menamong them also. As soon as they got to the place where their other boatlay, they ran their boat into the beach and came all on shore, haulingthe boat up after them, which I was glad to see, for I was afraid theywould rather have left the boat at an anchor some distance from theshore, with some hands in her to guard her, and so we should not be ableto seize the boat. Being on shore, the first thing they did, they ranall to their other boat; and it was easy to see they were under a greatsurprise to find her stripped, as above, of all that was in her, and agreat hole in her bottom. After they had mused a while upon this, theyset up two or three great shouts, hallooing with all their might, to tryif they could make their companions hear; but all was to no purpose.Then they came all close in a ring, and fired a volley of their smallarms, which indeed we heard, and the echoes made the woods ring. But itwas all one; those in the cave, we were sure, could not hear; and thosein our keeping, though they heard it well enough, yet durst give noanswer to them. They were so astonished at the surprise of this, that,as they told us afterwards, they resolved to go all on board again totheir ship, and let them know that the men were all murdered, and thelong-boat staved; accordingly, they immediately launched their boatagain, and got all of them on board.
The captain was terribly amazed, and even confounded, at this, believingthey would go on board the ship again and set sail, giving their comradesover for lost, and so he should still lose the ship, which he was inhopes we should have recovered; but he was quickly as much frightened theother way.
They had not been long put off with the boat, when we perceived them allcoming on shore again; but with this new measure in their conduct, whichit seems they consulted together upon, viz. to leave three men in theboat, and the rest to go on shore, and go up into the country to look fortheir fellows. This was a great disappointment to us, for now we were ata loss what to do, as our seizing those seven men on shore would be noadvantage to us if we let the boat escape; because they would row away tothe ship, and then the rest of them would be sure to weigh and set sail,and so our recovering the ship would be lost. However we had no remedybut to wait and see what the issue of things might present. The sevenmen came on shore, and the three who remained in the boat put her off toa good distance from the shore, and came to an anchor to wait for them;so that it was impossible for us to come at them in the boat. Those thatcame on shore kept close together, marching towards the top of the littlehill under which my habitation lay; and we could see them plainly, thoughthey could not perceive us. We should have been very glad if they wouldhave come nearer us, so that we might have fired at them, or that theywould have gone farther off, that we might come abroad. But when theywere come to the brow of the hill where they could see a great way intothe valleys and woods, which lay towards the north-east part, and wherethe island lay lowest, they shouted and hallooed till they were weary;and not caring, it seems, to venture far from the shore, nor far from oneanother, they sat down together under a tree to consider it. Had theythought fit to have gone to sleep there, as the other part of them haddone, they had done the job for us; but they were too full ofapprehensions of danger to venture to go to sleep, though they could nottell what the danger was they had to fear.
The captain made a very just proposal to me upon this consultation oftheirs, viz. that perhaps they would all fire a volley again, toendeavour to make their fellows hear, and that we should all sally uponthem just at the juncture when their pieces were all discharged, and theywould certainly yield, and we should have them without bloodshed. Iliked this proposal, provided it was done while we were near enough tocome up to them before they could load their pieces again. But thisevent did not happen; and we lay still a long time, very irresolute whatcourse to take. At length I told them there would be nothing done, in myopinion, till night; and then, if they did not return to the boat,perhaps we might find a way to get between them and the shore, and somight use some stratagem with them in the boat to get them on shore. Wewaited a great while, though very impatient for their removing; and werevery uneasy when, after long consultation, we saw them all start up andmarch down towards the sea
; it seems they had such dreadful apprehensionsof the danger of the place that they resolved to go on board the shipagain, give their companions over for lost, and so go on with theirintended voyage with the ship.
As soon as I perceived them go towards the shore, I imagined it to be asit really was that they had given over their search, and were going backagain; and the captain, as soon as I told him my thoughts, was ready tosink at the apprehensions of it; but I presently thought of a stratagemto fetch them back again, and which answered my end to a tittle. Iordered Friday and the captain's mate to go over the little creekwestward, towards the place where the savages came on shore, when Fridaywas rescued, and so soon as they came to a little rising round, at abouthalf a mile distant, I bid them halloo out, as loud as they could, andwait till they found the seamen heard them; that as soon as ever theyheard the seamen answer them, they should return it again; and then,keeping out of sight, take a round, always answering when the othershallooed, to draw them as far into the island and among the woods aspossible, and then wheel about again to me by such ways as I directedthem.
They were just going into the boat when Friday and the mate hallooed; andthey presently heard them, and answering, ran along the shore westward,towards the voice they heard, when they were stopped by the creek, wherethe water being up, they could not get over, and called for the boat tocome up and set them over; as, indeed, I expected. When they had setthemselves over, I observed that the boat being gone a good way into thecreek, and, as it were, in a harbour within the land, they took one ofthe three men out of her, to go along with them, and left only two in theboat, having fastened her to the stump of a little tree on the shore.This was what I wished for; and immediately leaving Friday and thecaptain's mate to their business, I took the rest with me; and, crossingthe creek out of their sight, we surprised the two men before they wereaware--one of them lying on the shore, and the other being in the boat.The fellow on shore was between sleeping and waking, and going to startup; the captain, who was foremost, ran in upon him, and knocked him down;and then called out to him in the boat to yield, or he was a dead man.They needed very few arguments to persuade a single man to yield, when hesaw five men upon him and his comrade knocked down: besides, this was, itseems, one of the three who were not so hearty in the mutiny as the restof the crew, and therefore was easily persuaded not only to yield, butafterwards to join very sincerely with us. In the meantime, Friday andthe captain's mate so well managed their business with the rest that theydrew them, by hallooing and answering, from one hill to another, and fromone wood to another, till they not only heartily tired them, but leftthem where they were, very sure they could not reach back to the boatbefore it was dark; and, indeed, they were heartily tired themselvesalso, by the time they came back to us.
We had nothing now to do but to watch for them in the dark, and to fallupon them, so as to make sure work with them. It was several hours afterFriday came back to me before they came back to their boat; and we couldhear the foremost of them, long before they came quite up, calling tothose behind to come along; and could also hear them answer, and complainhow lame and tired they were, and not able to come any faster: which wasvery welcome news to us. At length they came up to the boat: but it isimpossible to express their confusion when they found the boat fastaground in the creek, the tide ebbed out, and their two men gone. Wecould hear them call one to another in a most lamentable manner, tellingone another they were got into an enchanted island; that either therewere inhabitants in it, and they should all be murdered, or else therewere devils and spirits in it, and they should be all carried away anddevoured. They hallooed again, and called their two comrades by theirnames a great many times; but no answer. After some time we could seethem, by the little light there was, run about, wringing their hands likemen in despair, and sometimes they would go and sit down in the boat torest themselves: then come ashore again, and walk about again, and so thesame thing over again. My men would fain have had me give them leave tofall upon them at once in the dark; but I was willing to take them atsome advantage, so as to spare them, and kill as few of them as I could;and especially I was unwilling to hazard the killing of any of our men,knowing the others were very well armed. I resolved to wait, to see ifthey did not separate; and therefore, to make sure of them, I drew myambuscade nearer, and ordered Friday and the captain to creep upon theirhands and feet, as close to the ground as they could, that they might notbe discovered, and get as near them as they could possibly before theyoffered to fire.
They had not been long in that posture when the boatswain, who was theprincipal ringleader of the mutiny, and had now shown himself the mostdejected and dispirited of all the rest, came walking towards them, withtwo more of the crew; the captain was so eager at having this principalrogue so much in his power, that he could hardly have patience to let himcome so near as to be sure of him, for they only heard his tongue before:but when they came nearer, the captain and Friday, starting up on theirfeet, let fly at them. The boatswain was killed upon the spot: the nextman was shot in the body, and fell just by him, though he did not dietill an hour or two after; and the third ran for it. At the noise of thefire I immediately advanced with my whole army, which was now eight men,viz. myself, generalissimo; Friday, my lieutenant-general; the captainand his two men, and the three prisoners of war whom we had trusted witharms. We came upon them, indeed, in the dark, so that they could not seeour number; and I made the man they had left in the boat, who was now oneof us, to call them by name, to try if I could bring them to a parley,and so perhaps might reduce them to terms; which fell out just as wedesired: for indeed it was easy to think, as their condition then was,they would be very willing to capitulate. So he calls out as loud as hecould to one of them, "Tom Smith! Tom Smith!" Tom Smith answeredimmediately, "Is that Robinson?" for it seems he knew the voice. Theother answered, "Ay, ay; for God's sake, Tom Smith, throw down your armsand yield, or you are all dead men this moment." "Who must we yield to?Where are they?" says Smith again. "Here they are," says he; "here's ourcaptain and fifty men with him, have been hunting you these two hours;the boatswain is killed; Will Fry is wounded, and I am a prisoner; and ifyou do not yield you are all lost." "Will they give us quarter, then?"says Tom Smith, "and we will yield." "I'll go and ask, if you promise toyield," said Robinson: so he asked the captain, and the captain himselfthen calls out, "You, Smith, you know my voice; if you lay down your armsimmediately and submit, you shall have your lives, all but Will Atkins."
Upon this Will Atkins cried out, "For God's sake, captain, give mequarter; what have I done? They have all been as bad as I:" which, bythe way, was not true; for it seems this Will Atkins was the first manthat laid hold of the captain when they first mutinied, and used himbarbarously in tying his hands and giving him injurious language.However, the captain told him he must lay down his arms at discretion,and trust to the governor's mercy: by which he meant me, for they allcalled me governor. In a word, they all laid down their arms and beggedtheir lives; and I sent the man that had parleyed with them, and twomore, who bound them all; and then my great army of fifty men, which,with those three, were in all but eight, came up and seized upon them,and upon their boat; only that I kept myself and one more out of sightfor reasons of state.
Our next work was to repair the boat, and think of seizing the ship: andas for the captain, now he had leisure to parley with them, heexpostulated with them upon the villainy of their practices with him, andupon the further wickedness of their design, and how certainly it mustbring them to misery and distress in the end, and perhaps to the gallows.They all appeared very penitent, and begged hard for their lives. As forthat, he told them they were not his prisoners, but the commander's ofthe island; that they thought they had set him on shore in a barren,uninhabited island; but it had pleased God so to direct them that it wasinhabited, and that the governor was an Englishman; that he might hangthem all there, if he pleased; but as he had given them all quarter, hesupposed he would send them to England, to
be dealt with there as justicerequired, except Atkins, whom he was commanded by the governor to adviseto prepare for death, for that he would be hanged in the morning.
Though this was all but a fiction of his own, yet it had its desiredeffect; Atkins fell upon his knees to beg the captain to intercede withthe governor for his life; and all the rest begged of him, for God'ssake, that they might not be sent to England.
It now occurred to me that the time of our deliverance was come, and thatit would be a most easy thing to bring these fellows in to be hearty ingetting possession of the ship; so I retired in the dark from them, thatthey might not see what kind of a governor they had, and called thecaptain to me; when I called, at a good distance, one of the men wasordered to speak again, and say to the captain, "Captain, the commandercalls for you;" and presently the captain replied, "Tell his excellency Iam just coming." This more perfectly amazed them, and they all believedthat the commander was just by, with his fifty men. Upon the captaincoming to me, I told him my project for seizing the ship, which he likedwonderfully well, and resolved to put it in execution the next morning.But, in order to execute it with more art, and to be secure of success, Itold him we must divide the prisoners, and that he should go and takeAtkins, and two more of the worst of them, and send them pinioned to thecave where the others lay. This was committed to Friday and the two menwho came on shore with the captain. They conveyed them to the cave as toa prison: and it was, indeed, a dismal place, especially to men in theircondition. The others I ordered to my bower, as I called it, of which Ihave given a full description: and as it was fenced in, and theypinioned, the place was secure enough, considering they were upon theirbehaviour.
To these in the morning I sent the captain, who was to enter into aparley with them; in a word, to try them, and tell me whether he thoughtthey might be trusted or not to go on board and surprise the ship. Hetalked to them of the injury done him, of the condition they were broughtto, and that though the governor had given them quarter for their livesas to the present action, yet that if they were sent to England theywould all be hanged in chains; but that if they would join in so just anattempt as to recover the ship, he would have the governor's engagementfor their pardon.
Any one may guess how readily such a proposal would be accepted by men intheir condition; they fell down on their knees to the captain, andpromised, with the deepest imprecations, that they would be faithful tohim to the last drop, and that they should owe their lives to him, andwould go with him all over the world; that they would own him as a fatherto them as long as they lived. "Well," says the captain, "I must go andtell the governor what you say, and see what I can do to bring him toconsent to it." So he brought me an account of the temper he found themin, and that he verily believed they would be faithful. However, that wemight be very secure, I told him he should go back again and choose outthose five, and tell them, that they might see he did not want men, thathe would take out those five to be his assistants, and that the governorwould keep the other two, and the three that were sent prisoners to thecastle (my cave), as hostages for the fidelity of those five; and that ifthey proved unfaithful in the execution, the five hostages should behanged in chains alive on the shore. This looked severe, and convincedthem that the governor was in earnest; however, they had no way left thembut to accept it; and it was now the business of the prisoners, as muchas of the captain, to persuade the other five to do their duty.
Our strength was now thus ordered for the expedition: first, the captain,his mate, and passenger; second, the two prisoners of the first gang, towhom, having their character from the captain, I had given their liberty,and trusted them with arms; third, the other two that I had kept till nowin my bower, pinioned, but on the captain's motion had now released;fourth, these five released at last; so that there were twelve in all,besides five we kept prisoners in the cave for hostages.
I asked the captain if he was willing to venture with these hands onboard the ship; but as for me and my man Friday, I did not think it wasproper for us to stir, having seven men left behind; and it wasemployment enough for us to keep them asunder, and supply them withvictuals. As to the five in the cave, I resolved to keep them fast, butFriday went in twice a day to them, to supply them with necessaries; andI made the other two carry provisions to a certain distance, where Fridaywas to take them.
When I showed myself to the two hostages, it was with the captain, whotold them I was the person the governor had ordered to look after them;and that it was the governor's pleasure they should not stir anywhere butby my direction; that if they did, they would be fetched into the castle,and be laid in irons: so that as we never suffered them to see me asgovernor, I now appeared as another person, and spoke of the governor,the garrison, the castle, and the like, upon all occasions.
The captain now had no difficulty before him, but to furnish his twoboats, stop the breach of one, and man them. He made his passengercaptain of one, with four of the men; and himself, his mate, and fivemore, went in the other; and they contrived their business very well, forthey came up to the ship about midnight. As soon as they came withincall of the ship, he made Robinson hail them, and tell them they hadbrought off the men and the boat, but that it was a long time before theyhad found them, and the like, holding them in a chat till they came tothe ship's side; when the captain and the mate entering first with theirarms, immediately knocked down the second mate and carpenter with thebutt-end of their muskets, being very faithfully seconded by their men;they secured all the rest that were upon the main and quarter decks, andbegan to fasten the hatches, to keep them down that were below; when theother boat and their men, entering at the forechains, secured theforecastle of the ship, and the scuttle which went down into thecook-room, making three men they found there prisoners. When this wasdone, and all safe upon deck, the captain ordered the mate, with threemen, to break into the round-house, where the new rebel captain lay, who,having taken the alarm, had got up, and with two men and a boy had gotfirearms in their hands; and when the mate, with a crow, split open thedoor, the new captain and his men fired boldly among them, and woundedthe mate with a musket ball, which broke his arm, and wounded two more ofthe men, but killed nobody. The mate, calling for help, rushed, however,into the round-house, wounded as he was, and, with his pistol, shot thenew captain through the head, the bullet entering at his mouth, and cameout again behind one of his ears, so that he never spoke a word more:upon which the rest yielded, and the ship was taken effectually, withoutany more lives lost.
As soon as the ship was thus secured, the captain ordered seven guns tobe fired, which was the signal agreed upon with me to give me notice ofhis success, which, you may be sure, I was very glad to hear, having satwatching upon the shore for it till near two o'clock in the morning.Having thus heard the signal plainly, I laid me down; and it having beena day of great fatigue to me, I slept very sound, till I was surprisedwith the noise of a gun; and presently starting up, I heard a man call meby the name of "Governor! Governor!" and presently I knew the captain'svoice; when, climbing up to the top of the hill, there he stood, and,pointing to the ship, he embraced me in his arms, "My dear friend anddeliverer," says he, "there's your ship; for she is all yours, and so arewe, and all that belong to her." I cast my eyes to the ship, and thereshe rode, within little more than half a mile of the shore; for they hadweighed her anchor as soon as they were masters of her, and, the weatherbeing fair, had brought her to an anchor just against the mouth of thelittle creek; and the tide being up, the captain had brought the pinnacein near the place where I had first landed my rafts, and so landed justat my door. I was at first ready to sink down with the surprise; for Isaw my deliverance, indeed, visibly put into my hands, all things easy,and a large ship just ready to carry me away whither I pleased to go. Atfirst, for some time, I was not able to answer him one word; but as hehad taken me in his arms I held fast by him, or I should have fallen tothe ground. He perceived the surprise, and immediately pulled a bottleout of his pocket and gave
me a dram of cordial, which he had brought onpurpose for me. After I had drunk it, I sat down upon the ground; andthough it brought me to myself, yet it was a good while before I couldspeak a word to him. All this time the poor man was in as great anecstasy as I, only not under any surprise as I was; and he said athousand kind and tender things to me, to compose and bring me to myself;but such was the flood of joy in my breast, that it put all my spiritsinto confusion: at last it broke out into tears, and in a little whileafter I recovered my speech; I then took my turn, and embraced him as mydeliverer, and we rejoiced together. I told him I looked upon him as aman sent by Heaven to deliver me, and that the whole transaction seemedto be a chain of wonders; that such things as these were the testimonieswe had of a secret hand of Providence governing the world, and anevidence that the eye of an infinite Power could search into the remotestcorner of the world, and send help to the miserable whenever He pleased.I forgot not to lift up my heart in thankfulness to Heaven; and whatheart could forbear to bless Him, who had not only in a miraculous mannerprovided for me in such a wilderness, and in such a desolate condition,but from whom every deliverance must always be acknowledged to proceed.
When we had talked a while, the captain told me he had brought me somelittle refreshment, such as the ship afforded, and such as the wretchesthat had been so long his masters had not plundered him of. Upon this,he called aloud to the boat, and bade his men bring the things ashorethat were for the governor; and, indeed, it was a present as if I hadbeen one that was not to be carried away with them, but as if I had beento dwell upon the island still. First, he had brought me a case ofbottles full of excellent cordial waters, six large bottles of Madeirawine (the bottles held two quarts each), two pounds of excellent goodtobacco, twelve good pieces of the ship's beef, and six pieces of pork,with a bag of peas, and about a hundred-weight of biscuit; he alsobrought me a box of sugar, a box of flour, a bag full of lemons, and twobottles of lime-juice, and abundance of other things. But besides these,and what was a thousand times more useful to me, he brought me six newclean shirts, six very good neckcloths, two pair of gloves, one pair ofshoes, a hat, and one pair of stockings, with a very good suit of clothesof his own, which had been worn but very little: in a word, he clothed mefrom head to foot. It was a very kind and agreeable present, as any onemay imagine, to one in my circumstances, but never was anything in theworld of that kind so unpleasant, awkward, and uneasy as it was to me towear such clothes at first.
After these ceremonies were past, and after all his good things werebrought into my little apartment, we began to consult what was to be donewith the prisoners we had; for it was worth considering whether we mightventure to take them with us or no, especially two of them, whom he knewto be incorrigible and refractory to the last degree; and the captainsaid he knew they were such rogues that there was no obliging them, andif he did carry them away, it must be in irons, as malefactors, to bedelivered over to justice at the first English colony he could come to;and I found that the captain himself was very anxious about it. Uponthis, I told him that, if he desired it, I would undertake to bring thetwo men he spoke of to make it their own request that he should leavethem upon the island. "I should be very glad of that," says the captain,"with all my heart." "Well," says I, "I will send for them up and talkwith them for you." So I caused Friday and the two hostages, for theywere now discharged, their comrades having performed their promise; Isay, I caused them to go to the cave, and bring up the five men, pinionedas they were, to the bower, and keep them there till I came. After sometime, I came thither dressed in my new habit; and now I was calledgovernor again. Being all met, and the captain with me, I caused the mento be brought before me, and I told them I had got a full account oftheir villainous behaviour to the captain, and how they had run away withthe ship, and were preparing to commit further robberies, but thatProvidence had ensnared them in their own ways, and that they were falleninto the pit which they had dug for others. I let them know that by mydirection the ship had been seized; that she lay now in the road; andthey might see by-and-by that their new captain had received the rewardof his villainy, and that they would see him hanging at the yard-arm;that, as to them, I wanted to know what they had to say why I should notexecute them as pirates taken in the fact, as by my commission they couldnot doubt but I had authority so to do.
One of them answered in the name of the rest, that they had nothing tosay but this, that when they were taken the captain promised them theirlives, and they humbly implored my mercy. But I told them I knew notwhat mercy to show them; for as for myself, I had resolved to quit theisland with all my men, and had taken passage with the captain to go toEngland; and as for the captain, he could not carry them to England otherthan as prisoners in irons, to be tried for mutiny and running away withthe ship; the consequence of which, they must needs know, would be thegallows; so that I could not tell what was best for them, unless they hada mind to take their fate in the island. If they desired that, as I hadliberty to leave the island, I had some inclination to give them theirlives, if they thought they could shift on shore. They seemed verythankful for it, and said they would much rather venture to stay therethan be carried to England to be hanged. So I left it on that issue.
However, the captain seemed to make some difficulty of it, as if he durstnot leave them there. Upon this I seemed a little angry with thecaptain, and told him that they were my prisoners, not his; and thatseeing I had offered them so much favour, I would be as good as my word;and that if he did not think fit to consent to it I would set them atliberty, as I found them: and if he did not like it he might take themagain if he could catch them. Upon this they appeared very thankful, andI accordingly set them at liberty, and bade them retire into the woods,to the place whence they came, and I would leave them some firearms, someammunition, and some directions how they should live very well if theythought fit. Upon this I prepared to go on board the ship; but told thecaptain I would stay that night to prepare my things, and desired him togo on board in the meantime, and keep all right in the ship, and send theboat on shore next day for me; ordering him, at all events, to cause thenew captain, who was killed, to be hanged at the yard-arm, that these menmight see him.
When the captain was gone I sent for the men up to me to my apartment,and entered seriously into discourse with them on their circumstances. Itold them I thought they had made a right choice; that if the captain hadcarried them away they would certainly be hanged. I showed them the newcaptain hanging at the yard-arm of the ship, and told them they hadnothing less to expect.
When they had all declared their willingness to stay, I then told them Iwould let them into the story of my living there, and put them into theway of making it easy to them. Accordingly, I gave them the wholehistory of the place, and of my coming to it; showed them myfortifications, the way I made my bread, planted my corn, cured mygrapes; and, in a word, all that was necessary to make them easy. I toldthem the story also of the seventeen Spaniards that were to be expected,for whom I left a letter, and made them promise to treat them in commonwith themselves. Here it may be noted that the captain, who had ink onboard, was greatly surprised that I never hit upon a way of making ink ofcharcoal and water, or of something else, as I had done things much moredifficult.
I left them my firearms--viz. five muskets, three fowling-pieces, andthree swords. I had above a barrel and a half of powder left; for afterthe first year or two I used but little, and wasted none. I gave them adescription of the way I managed the goats, and directions to milk andfatten them, and to make both butter and cheese. In a word, I gave themevery part of my own story; and told them I should prevail with thecaptain to leave them two barrels of gunpowder more, and somegarden-seeds, which I told them I would have been very glad of. Also, Igave them the bag of peas which the captain had brought me to eat, andbade them be sure to sow and increase them.