The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton

one thing, which afterwards stood us ingreat stead, viz., that the flesh of their goats, and their beef also,but especially the former, when we had dried and cured it, looked red,and ate hard and firm, as dried beef in Holland; they were so pleasedwith it, and it was such a dainty to them, that at any time after theywould trade with us for it, not knowing, or so much as imagining what itwas; so that for ten or twelve pounds' weight of smoke-dried beef, theywould give us a whole bullock, or cow, or anything else we could desire.

  Here we observed two things that were very material to us, evenessentially so; first, we found they had a great deal of earthenwarehere, which they made use of many ways as we did; particularly they hadlong, deep earthen pots, which they used to sink into the ground, tokeep the water which they drunk cool and pleasant; and the other was,that they had larger canoes than their neighbours had.

  By this we were prompted to inquire if they had no larger vessels thanthose we saw there, or if any other of the inhabitants had not such.They signified presently that they had no larger boats than that theyshowed us; but that on the other side of the island they had largerboats, and that with decks upon them, and large sails; and this made usresolve to coast round the whole island to see them; so we prepared andvictualled our canoe for the voyage, and, in a word, went to sea for thethird time.

  It cost us a month or six weeks' time to perform this voyage, in whichtime we went on shore several times for water and provisions, and foundthe natives always very free and courteous; but we were surprised onemorning early, being at the extremity of the northernmost part of theisland, when one of our men cried out, "A sail! a sail!" We presentlysaw a vessel a great way out at sea; but after we had looked at it withour perspective glasses, and endeavoured all we could to make out whatit was, we could not tell what to think of it; for it was neither ship,ketch, galley, galliot, or like anything that we had ever seen before;all that we could make of it was, that it went from us, standing out tosea. In a word, we soon lost sight of it, for we were in no conditionto chase anything, and we never saw it again; but, by all that we couldperceive of it, from what we saw of such things afterwards, it was someArabian vessel, which had been trading to the coast of Mozambique, orZanzibar, the same place where we afterwards went, as you shall hear.

  I kept no journal of this voyage, nor indeed did I all this whileunderstand anything of navigation, more than the common business of aforemast-man; so I can say nothing to the latitudes or distances of anyplaces we were at, how long we were going, or how far we sailed ina day; but this I remember, that being now come round the island, wesailed up the eastern shore due south, as we had done down the westernshore due north before.

  Nor do I remember that the natives differed much from one another,either in stature or complexion, or in their manners, their habits,their weapons, or indeed in anything; and yet we could not perceive thatthey had any intelligence one with another; but they were extremely kindand civil to us on this side, as well as on the other.

  We continued our voyage south for many weeks, though with severalintervals of going on shore to get provisions and water. At length,coming round a point of land which lay about a league further thanordinary into the sea, we were agreeably surprised with a sight which,no doubt, had been as disagreeable to those concerned, as it waspleasant to us. This was the wreck of an European ship, which had beencast away upon the rocks, which in that place run a great way into thesea.

  We could see plainly, at low water, a great deal of the ship lay dry;even at high water, she was not entirely covered; and that at most shedid not lie above a league from the shore. It will easily be believedthat our curiosity led us, the wind and weather also permitting, togo directly to her, which we did without any difficulty, and presentlyfound that it was a Dutch-built ship, and that she could not have beenvery long in that condition, a great deal of the upper work of her sternremaining firm, with the mizzen-mast standing. Her stern seemed to bejammed in between two ridges of the rock, and so remained fast, all thefore part of the ship having been beaten to pieces.

  We could see nothing to be gotten out of the wreck that was worth ourwhile; but we resolved to go on shore, and stay some time thereabouts,to see if perhaps we might get any light into the story of her; andwe were not without hopes that we might hear something more particularabout her men, and perhaps find some of them on shore there, in the samecondition that we were in, and so might increase our company.

  It was a very pleasant sight to us when, coming on shore, we saw allthe marks and tokens of a ship-carpenter's yard; as a launch-block andcradles, scaffolds and planks, and pieces of planks, the remains ofthe building a ship or vessel; and, in a word, a great many thingsthat fairly invited us to go about the same work; and we soon came tounderstand that the men belonging to the ship that was lost had savedthemselves on shore, perhaps in their boat, and had built themselves abarque or sloop, and so were gone to sea again; and, inquiring of thenatives which way they went, they pointed to the south and south-west,by which we could easily understand they were gone away to the Cape ofGood Hope.

  Nobody will imagine we could be so dull as not to gather from hence thatwe might take the same method for our escape; so we resolved first, ingeneral, that we would try if possible to build us a boat of one kind orother, and go to sea as our fate should direct.

  In order to this our first work was to have the two carpenters searchabout to see what materials the Dutchmen had left behind them that mightbe of use; and, in particular, they found one that was very useful,and which I was much employed about, and that was a pitch-kettle, and alittle pitch in it.

  When we came to set close to this work we found it very laborious anddifficult, having but few tools, no ironwork, no cordage, no sails; sothat, in short, whatever we built, we were obliged to be our own smiths,rope-makers, sail-makers, and indeed to practise twenty trades that weknew little or nothing of. However, necessity was the spur to invention,and we did many things which before we thought impracticable, that is tosay, in our circumstances.

  After our two carpenters had resolved upon the dimensions of what theywould build, they set us all to work, to go off in our boats and splitup the wreck of the old ship, and to bring away everything we could; andparticularly that, if possible, we should bring away the mizzen-mast,which was left standing, which with much difficulty we effected, afterabove twenty days' labour of fourteen of our men.

  At the same time we got out a great deal of ironwork, as bolts, spikes,nails, &c., all of which our artist, of whom I have spoken already, whowas now grown a very dexterous smith, made us nails and hinges for ourrudder, and spikes such as we wanted.

  But we wanted an anchor, and if we had had an anchor, we could not havemade a cable; so we contented ourselves with making some ropes with thehelp of the natives, of such stuff as they made their mats of, and withthese we made such a kind of cable or tow-line as was sufficient tofasten our vessel to the shore, which we contented ourselves with forthat time.

  To be short, we spent four months here, and worked very hard too; at theend of which time we launched our frigate, which, in a few words, hadmany defects, but yet, all things considered, it was as well as we couldexpect it to be.

  In short, it was a kind of sloop, of the burthen of near eighteenor twenty tons; and had we had masts and sails, standing and runningrigging, as is usual in such cases, and other conveniences, the vesselmight have carried us wherever we could have had a mind to go; but ofall the materials we wanted, this was the worst, viz., that we had notar or pitch to pay the seams and secure the bottom; and though we didwhat we could, with tallow and oil, to make a mixture to supply thatpart, yet we could not bring it to answer our end fully; and when welaunched her into the water, she was so leaky, and took in the water sofast, that we thought all our labour had been lost, for we had much adoto make her swim; and as for pumps, we had none, nor had we any means tomake one.

  But at length one of the natives, a black negro-man, showed us a tree,the wood of which being put into the fire, sends forth
a liquid that isas glutinous and almost as strong as tar, and of which, by boiling, wemade a sort of stuff which served us for pitch, and this answered ourend effectually; for we perfectly made our vessel sound and tight, sothat we wanted no pitch or tar at all. This secret has stood me in steadupon many occasions since that time in the same place.

  Our vessel being thus finished, out of the mizzen-mast of the ship wemade a very good mast to her, and fitted our sails to it as well as wecould; then we made a rudder and tiller, and, in a word, everything thatour present necessity called upon us for; and having victualled her, andput as much fresh water on board as we thought we wanted, or as we knewhow to stow (for we were yet without casks), we put to sea with a fairwind.

  We had spent near another year in these rambles, and in this pieceof work; for it was now, as our men said, about the beginning ofour February, and the sun went from us apace, which was much to oursatisfaction, for the heats were exceedingly violent. The wind, as Isaid,