The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton

cannon upon it, which was a sufficient defenceto them on that side of the sea; and just at the end of the platformthey had made a launch and a little yard, and were all hard at work,building another little ship, as I may call it, to go to sea in; butthey put a stop to this work upon the news they had of our being comein.

  When our men went into their huts, it was surprising, indeed, to see thevast stock of wealth they had got, in gold and silver and jewels, which,however, they told us was a trifle to what Captain Avery had, whereverhe was gone.

  It was five days we had waited for our men, and no news of them; andindeed I gave them over for lost, but was surprised, after five days'waiting, to see a ship's boat come rowing towards us along shore. Whatto make of it I could not tell, but was at least better satisfied whenour men told me they heard them halloo and saw them wave their caps tous.

  In a little time they came quite up to us; and I saw friend Williamstand up in the boat and make signs to us; so they came on board; butwhen I saw there were but fifteen of our one-and-thirty men, I asked himwhat had become of their fellows. "Oh," says William, "they are all verywell; and my dream is fully made good, and the cockswain's too."

  This made me very impatient to know how the case stood; so he told usthe whole story, which indeed surprised us all. The next day we weighed,and stood away southerly to join Captain Wilmot and ship at Mangahelly,where we found him, as I said, a little chagrined at our stay; but wepacified him afterwards with telling him the history of William's dream,and the consequence of it.

  In the meantime the camp of our comrades was so near Mangahelly, thatour admiral and I, friend William, and some of the men, resolved to takethe sloop and go and see them, and fetch them all, and their goods,bag and baggage, on board our ship, which accordingly we did, and foundtheir camp, their fortifications, the battery of guns they had erected,their treasure, and all the men, just as William had related it; so,after some stay, we took all the men into the sloop, and brought themaway with us.

  It was some time before we knew what was become of Captain Avery; butafter about a month, by the direction of the men who had lost theirship, we sent the sloop to cruise along the shore, to find out, ifpossible, where they were; and in about a week's cruise our men foundthem, and particularly that they had lost their ship, as well as our menhad lost theirs, and that they were every way in as bad a condition asours.

  It was about ten days before the sloop returned, and Captain Avery withthem; and this was the whole force that, as I remember, Captain Averyever had with him; for now we joined all our companies together, and itstood thus:--We had two ships and a sloop, in which we had 320 men, butmuch too few to man them as they ought to be, the great Portuguese shiprequiring of herself near 400 men to man her completely. As forour lost, but now found comrade, her complement of men was 180, orthereabouts; and Captain Avery had about 300 men with him, whereof hehad ten carpenters with him, most of which were taken aboard theprize they had taken; so that, in a word, all the force Avery had atMadagascar, in the year 1699, or thereabouts, amounted to our threeships, for his own was lost, as you have heard; and never had any morethan about 1200 men in all.

  It was about a month after this that all our crews got together, andas Avery was unshipped, we all agreed to bring our own company into thePortuguese man-of-war and the sloop, and give Captain Avery the Spanishfrigate, with all the tackles and furniture, guns and ammunition, forhis crew by themselves; for which they, being full of wealth, agreed togive us 40,000 pieces of eight.

  It was next considered what course we should take. Captain Avery, togive him his due, proposed our building a little city here, establishingourselves on shore, with a good fortification and works proper to defendourselves; and that, as we had wealth enough, and could increase it towhat degree we pleased, we should content ourselves to retire here,and bid defiance to the world. But I soon convinced him that this placewould be no security to us, if we pretended to carry on our cruisingtrade; for that then all the nations of Europe, and indeed of that partof the world, would be engaged to root us out; but if we resolved tolive there as in retirement, and plant in the country as private men,and give over our trade of pirating, then, indeed, we might plant andsettle ourselves where we pleased. But then, I told him, the best waywould be to treat with the natives, and buy a tract of land of themfarther up the country, seated upon some navigable river, where boatsmight go up and down for pleasure, but not ships to endanger us; thatthus planting the high ground with cattle, such as cows and goats, ofwhich the country also was full, to be sure we might live here as wellas any men in the world; and I owned to him I thought it was a goodretreat for those that were willing to leave off and lay down, and yetdid not care to venture home and be hanged; that is to say, to run therisk of it.

  Captain Avery, however he made no positive discovery of his intentions,seemed to me to decline my notion of going up into the country to plant;on the contrary, it was apparent he was of Captain Wilmot's opinion,that they might maintain themselves on shore, and yet carry on theircruising trade too; and upon this they resolved. But, as I afterwardsunderstood, about fifty of their men went up the country, and settledthemselves in an inland place as a colony. Whether they are there stillor not, I cannot tell, or how many of them are left alive; but it is myopinion they are there still, and that they are considerably increased,for, as I hear, they have got some women among them, though not many;for it seems five Dutch women and three or four little girls were takenby them in a Dutch ship, which they afterwards took going to Mocha; andthree of those women, marrying some of these men, went with them to livein their new plantation. But of this I speak only by hearsay.

  As we lay here some time, I found our people mightily divided in theirnotions; some were for going this way, and some that, till at last Ibegan to foresee they would part company, and perhaps we should not havemen enough to keep together to man the great ship; so I took CaptainWilmot aside, and began to talk to him about it, but soon perceived thathe inclined himself to stay at Madagascar, and having got a vast wealthfor his own share, had secret designs of getting home some way or other.

  I argued the impossibility of it, and the hazard he would run, eitherof falling into the hands of thieves and murderers in the Red Sea,who would never let such a treasure as his pass their hands, or ofhis falling into the hands of the English, Dutch, or French, who wouldcertainly hang him for a pirate. I gave him an account of the voyageI had made from this very place to the continent of Africa, and what ajourney it was to travel on foot.

  In short, nothing could persuade him, but he would go into the Red Seawith the sloop, and where the children of Israel passed through the seadry-shod, and, landing there, would travel to Grand Cairo by land,which is not above eighty miles, and from thence he said he could shiphimself, by the way of Alexandria, to any part of the world.

  I represented the hazard, and indeed the impossibility, of his passingby Mocha and Jiddah without being attacked, if he offered it by force,or plundered, if he went to get leave; and explained the reasons of itso much and so effectually, that, though at last he would not hearken toit himself, none of his men would go with him. They told him they wouldgo anywhere with him to serve him, but that this was running himself andthem into certain destruction, without any possibility of avoiding it,or probability of answering his end. The captain took what I said tohim quite wrong, and pretended to resent it, and gave me some buccaneerwords upon it; but I gave him no return to it but this: that I advisedhim for his advantage; that if he did not understand it so, it was hisfault, not mine; that I did not forbid him to go, nor had I offeredto persuade any of the men not to go with him, though it was to theirapparent destruction.

  However, warm heads are not easily cooled. The captain was so eager thathe quitted our company, and, with most part of his crew, went over toCaptain Avery, and sorted with his people, taking all the treasure withhim, which, by the way, was not very fair in him, we having agreed toshare all our gains, whether more or less, whether absent or present.

/>   Our men muttered a little at it, but I pacified them as well as I could,and told them it was easy for us to get as much, if we minded our hits;and Captain Wilmot had set us a very good example; for, by the samerule, the agreement of any further sharing of profits with them was atan end. I took this occasion to put into their heads some part of myfurther designs, which were, to range over the eastern sea, and see ifwe could not make ourselves as rich as Mr Avery, who, it was true, hadgotten a prodigious deal of money, though not one-half of what was saidof it in Europe.

  Our men were so pleased with my forward, enterprising temper, thatthey assured me that they would go with me, one and all, over the wholeglobe, wherever I would carry them; and as for Captain Wilmot, theywould have nothing more to do with him. This came to his ears, and puthim into a great rage, so that he threatened, if I came on shore, hewould cut my throat.

  I had information of it privately, but took no notice of it at all;