The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton

such goods asare the product of China, and some gold; that their business was to selltheir cargo, and buy spices and European goods.

  This suited very well with our purpose; so I resolved now that we wouldleave off being pirates and turn merchants; so we told them what goodswe had on board, and that if they would bring their supercargoes ormerchants on board, we would trade with them. They were very willingto trade with us, but terribly afraid to trust us; nor was it an unjustfear, for we had plundered them already of what they had. On the otherhand, we were as diffident as they, and very uncertain what to do; butWilliam the Quaker put this matter into a way of barter. He came to meand told me he really thought the merchants looked like fair men, thatmeant honestly. "And besides," says William, "it is their interest to behonest now, for, as they know upon what terms we got the goods we are totruck with them, so they know we can afford good pennyworths; and in thenext place, it saves them going the whole voyage, so that the southerlymonsoons yet holding, if they traded with us, they could immediatelyreturn with their cargo to China;" though, by the way, we afterwardsfound they intended for Japan; but that was all one, for by this meansthey saved at least eight months' voyage. Upon these foundations,William said he was satisfied we might trust them; "for," says William,"I would as soon trust a man whose interest binds him to be just tome as a man whose principle binds himself." Upon the whole, Williamproposed that two of the merchants should be left on board our ship ashostages, and that part of our goods should be loaded in their vessel,and let the third go with it into the port where their ship lay; andwhen he had delivered the spices, he should bring back such things as itwas agreed should be exchanged. This was concluded on, and William theQuaker ventured to go along with them, which, upon my word, I should nothave cared to have done, nor was I willing that he should, but he wentstill upon the notion that it was their interest to treat him friendly.

  In the meantime, we came to an anchor under a little island in thelatitude of 23 degrees 28 minutes, being just under the northern tropic,and about twenty leagues from the island. Here we lay thirteen days, andbegan to be very uneasy for my friend William, for they had promisedto be back again in four days, which they might very easily have done.However, at the end of thirteen days, we saw three sail coming directlyto us, which a little surprised us all at first, not knowing what mightbe the case; and we began to put ourselves in a posture of defence; butas they came nearer us, we were soon satisfied, for the first vessel wasthat which William went in, who carried a flag of truce; and in a fewhours they all came to an anchor, and William came on board us with alittle boat, with the Chinese merchant in his company, and two othermerchants, who seemed to be a kind of brokers for the rest.

  Here he gave us an account how civilly he had been used; how they hadtreated him with all imaginable frankness and openness; that they hadnot only given him the full value of his spices and other goods which hecarried, in gold, by good weight, but had loaded the vessel again withsuch goods as he knew we were willing to trade for; and that afterwardsthey had resolved to bring the great ship out of the harbour, to liewhere we were, that so we might make what bargain we thought fit;only William said he had promised, in our name, that we should use noviolence with them, nor detain any of the vessels after we had donetrading with them. I told him we would strive to outdo them in civility,and that we would make good every part of his agreement; in tokenwhereof, I caused a white flag likewise to be spread at the poop of ourgreat ship, which was the signal agreed on.

  As to the third vessel which came with them, it was a kind of bark ofthe country, who, having intelligence of our design to traffic, cameoff to deal with us, bringing a great deal of gold and some provisions,which at that time we were very glad of.

  In short, we traded upon the high seas with these men, and indeed wemade a very good market, and yet sold thieves' pennyworths too. We soldhere about sixty ton of spice, chiefly cloves and nutmegs, and above twohundred bales of European goods, such as linen and woollen manufactures.We considered we should have occasion for some such things ourselves,and so we kept a good quantity of English stuffs, cloth, baize, &c., forourselves. I shall not take up any of the little room I have left herewith the further particulars of our trade; it is enough to mention,that, except a parcel of tea, and twelve bales of fine China wroughtsilks, we took nothing in exchange for our goods but gold; so that thesum we took here in that glittering commodity amounted to above fiftythousand ounces good weight.

  When we had finished our barter, we restored the hostages, and gave thethree merchants about the quantity of twelve hundredweight of nutmegs,and as many of cloves, with a handsome present of European linen andstuff for themselves, as a recompense for what we had taken from them;so we sent them away exceedingly well satisfied.

  Here it was that William gave me an account, that while he was on boardthe Japanese vessel, he met with a kind of religious, or Japan priest,who spoke some words of English to him; and, being very inquisitive toknow how he came to learn any of those words, he told him that therewas in his country thirteen Englishmen; he called them Englishmenvery articulately and distinctly, for he had conversed with them veryfrequently and freely. He said that they were all that were left oftwo-and-thirty men, who came on shore on the north side of Japan, beingdriven upon a great rock in a stormy night, where they lost their ship,and the rest of their men were drowned; that he had persuaded the kingof his country to send boats off to the rock or island where the shipwas lost, to save the rest of the men, and to bring them on shore, whichwas done, and they were used very kindly, and had houses built forthem, and land given them to plant for provision; and that they lived bythemselves.

  He said he went frequently among them, to persuade them to worship theirgod (an idol, I suppose, of their own making), which, he said, theyungratefully refused; and that therefore the king had once or twiceordered them all to be put to death; but that, as he said, he hadprevailed upon the king to spare them, and let them live their ownway, as long as they were quiet and peaceable, and did not go about towithdraw others from the worship of the country.

  I asked William why he did not inquire from whence they came. "I did,"said William; "for how could I but think it strange," said he, "to hearhim talk of Englishmen on the north side of Japan?" "Well," said I,"what account did he give of it?" "An account," said William, "that willsurprise thee, and all the world after thee, that shall hear of it,and which makes me wish thou wouldst go up to Japan and find themout." "What do you mean?" said I. "Whence could they come?" "Why," saysWilliam, "he pulled out a little book, and in it a piece of paper, whereit was written, in an Englishman's hand, and in plain English words,thus; and," says William, "I read it myself:--'We came from Greenland,and from the North Pole.'" This, indeed, was amazing to us all, and moreso to those seamen among us who knew anything of the infinite attemptswhich had been made from Europe, as well by the English as the Dutch,to discover a passage that way into those parts of the world; and asWilliam pressed as earnestly to go on to the north to rescue those poormen, so the ship's company began to incline to it; and, in a word, weall came to this, that we would stand in to the shore of Formosa, tofind this priest again, and have a further account of it all from him.Accordingly, the sloop went over; but when they came there, the vesselswere very unhappily sailed, and this put an end to our inquiry afterthem, and perhaps may have disappointed mankind of one of the most noblediscoveries that ever was made, or will again be made, in the world, forthe good of mankind in general; but so much for that.

  William was so uneasy at losing this opportunity, that he pressed usearnestly to go up to Japan to find out these men. He told us that ifit was nothing but to recover thirteen honest poor men from a kind ofcaptivity, which they would otherwise never be redeemed from, and where,perhaps, they might, some time or other, be murdered by the barbarouspeople, in defence of their idolatry, it were very well worth our while,and it would be, in some measure, making amends for the mischiefs we haddone in the world; but we, that had no concern upon us for th
e mischiefswe had done, had much less about any satisfactions to be made for it, sohe found that kind of discourse would weigh very little with us. Thenhe pressed us very earnestly to let him have the sloop to go by himself,and I told him I would not oppose it; but when he came to the sloop noneof the men would go with him; for the case was plain, they had all ashare in the cargo of the great ship, as well as in thae of the sloop,and the richness of the cargo was such that they would not leave it byany means; so poor William, much to his mortification, was obliged togive it over. What became of those thirteen men, or whether they are notthere still, I can give no account of.

  We are now at the end of our cruise; what we had taken was indeed soconsiderable, that it was not only enough to satisfy the most covetousand the most ambitious minds in the