The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton

promises?

  _D_. I am not to be your adviser.

  _W_. Thou art perhaps afraid to speak thy mind, because thou art intheir power. Pray, do any of them understand what thou and I say? Canthey speak Dutch?

  _D_. No, not one of them; I have no apprehensions upon that account atall.

  _W_. Why, then, answer me plainly, if thou art a Christian: Is it safefor us to venture upon their words, to put ourselves into their hands,and come on shore?

  _D_. You put it very home to me. Pray let me ask you another question:Are you in any likelihood of getting your ship off, if you refuse it?

  _W_. Yes, yes, we shall get off the ship; now the storm is over we don'tfear it.

  _D_. Then I cannot say it is best for you to trust them.

  _W_. Well, it is honestly said.

  _D_. But what shall I say to them?

  _W_. Give them good words, as they give us.

  _D_. What good words?

  _W_. Why, let them tell the king that we are strangers, who were drivenon his coast by a great storm; that we thank him very kindly for hisoffer of civility to us, which, if we are further distressed, we willaccept thankfully; but that at present we have no occasion to come onshore; and besides, that we cannot safely leave the ship in the presentcondition she is in; but that we are obliged to take care of her, inorder to get her off; and expect, in a tide or two more, to get herquite clear, and at an anchor.

  _D_. But he will expect you to come on shore, then, to visit him, andmake him some present for his civility.

  _W_. When we have got our ship clear, and stopped the leaks, we will payour respects to him.

  _D_. Nay, you may as well come to him now as then.

  _W_. Nay, hold, friend; I did not say we would come to him then: youtalked of making him a present, that is to pay our respects to him, isit not?

  _D_. Well, but I will tell him that you will come on shore to him whenyour ship is got off.

  _W_. I have nothing to say to that; you may tell him what you think fit.

  _D_. But he will be in a great rage if I do not.

  _W_. Who will he be in a great rage at?

  _D_. At you.

  _W_. What occasion have we to value that?

  _D_. Why, he will send all his army down against you.

  _W_. And what if they were all here just now? What dost thou supposethey could do to us?

  _D_. He would expect they should burn your ships and bring you all tohim.

  _W_. Tell him, if he should try, he may catch a Tartar.

  _D_. He has a world of men.

  _W_. Has he any ships?

  _D_. No, he has no ships.

  _W_. Nor boats?

  _D_. No, nor boats.

  _W_. Why, what then do you think we care for his men? What canst thou donow to us, if thou hadst a hundred thousand with thee?

  _D_. Oh! they might set you on fire.

  _W_. Set us a-firing, thou meanest; that they might indeed; but set uson fire they shall not; they may try, at their peril, and we shall makemad work with your hundred thousand men, if they come within reach ofour guns, I assure thee.

  _D_. But what if the king gives you hostages for your safety?

  _W_. Whom can he give but mere slaves and servants like thyself, whoselives he no more values than we an English hound?

  _D_. Whom do you demand for hostages?

  _W_. Himself and your worship.

  _D_. What would you do with him?

  _W_. Do with him as he would do with us--cut his head off.

  _D_. And what would you do with me?

  _W_. Do with thee? We would carry thee home into thine own country; and,though thou deservest the gallows, we would make a man and a Christianof thee again, and not do by thee as thou wouldst have done byus--betray thee to a parcel of merciless, savage pagans, that know noGod, nor how to show mercy to man.

  _D_. You put a thought in my head that I will speak to you aboutto-morrow.

  Thus they went away, and William came on board, and gave us a fullaccount of his parley with the old Dutchman, which was very diverting,and to me instructing; for I had abundance of reason to acknowledgeWilliam had made a better judgment of things than I.

  It was our good fortune to get our ship off that very night, and tobring her to an anchor at about a mile and a half farther out, and indeep water, to our great satisfaction; so that we had no need to fearthe Dutchman's king, with his hundred thousand men; and indeed wehad some sport with them the next day, when they came down, avast prodigious multitude of them, very few less in number, in ourimagination, than a hundred thousand, with some elephants; though, if ithad been an army of elephants, they could have done us no harm; for wewere fairly at our anchor now, and out of their reach. And indeed wethought ourselves more out of their reach than we really were; and itwas ten thousand to one that we had not been fast aground again, for thewind blowing off shore, though it made the water smooth where we lay,yet it blew the ebb farther out than usual, and we could easily perceivethe sand, which we touched upon before, lay in the shape of a half-moon,and surrounded us with two horns of it, so that we lay in the middleor centre of it, as in a round bay, safe just as we were, and in deepwater, but present death, as it were, on the right hand and on the left,for the two horns or points of the sand reached out beyond where ourship lay near two miles.

  On that part of the sand which lay on our east side, this misguidedmultitude extended themselves; and being, most of them, not above theirknees, or most of them not above ankle-deep in the water, they as itwere surrounded us on that side, and on the side of the mainland, and alittle way on the other side of the sand, standing in a half-circle,or rather three-fifths of a circle, for about six miles in length. Theother horn, or point of the sand, which lay on our west side, being notquite so shallow, they could not extend themselves upon it so far.

  They little thought what service they had done us, and how unwittingly,and by the greatest ignorance, they had made themselves pilots to us,while we, having not sounded the place, might have been lost before wewere aware. It is true we might have sounded our new harbour before wehad ventured out, but I cannot say for certain whether we should or not;for I, for my part, had not the least suspicion of what our real casewas; however, I say, perhaps, before we had weighed, we should havelooked about us a little. I am sure we ought to have done it; for,besides these armies of human furies, we had a very leaky ship, andall our pumps could hardly keep the water from growing upon us, and ourcarpenters were overboard, working to find out and stop the wounds wehad received, heeling her first on the one side, and then on the other;and it was very diverting to see how, when our men heeled the ship overto the side next the wild army that stood on the east horn of the sand,they were so amazed, between fright and joy, that it put them into akind of confusion, calling to one another, hallooing and skreeking, in amanner that it is impossible to describe.

  While we were doing this, for we were in a great hurry you may be sure,and all hands at work, as well at the stopping our leaks as repairingour rigging and sails, which had received a great deal of damage, andalso in rigging a new main-top-mast and the like;--I say, while we weredoing all this, we perceived a body of men, of near a thousand, movefrom that part of the army of the barbarians that lay at the bottom ofthe sandy bay, and came all along the water's edge, round the sand, tillthey stood just on our broadside east, and were within about half-a-mileof us. Then we saw the Dutchman come forward nearer to us, and allalone, with his white flag and all his motions, just as before, andthere he stood.

  Our men had but just brought the ship to rights again as they came up toour broadside, and we had very happily found out and stopped the worstand most dangerous leak that we had, to our very great satisfaction;so I ordered the boats to be hauled up and manned as they were the daybefore, and William to go as plenipotentiary. I would have gone myselfif I had understood Dutch, but as I did not, it was to no purpose, forI should be able to know nothing of what was said but from himat second-hand, which might be done
as well afterwards. All theinstructions I pretended to give William was, if possible, to get theold Dutchman away, and, if he could, to make him come on board.

  Well, William went just as before, and when he came within about sixtyor seventy yards of the shore, he held up his white flag as the Dutchmandid, and turning the boat's broadside to the shore, and his men lyingupon their oars, the parley or dialogue began again thus:--

  _William_. Well, friend, what dost thou say to us now?

  _Dutchman_. I come of the same mild errand as I did yesterday.

  _W_. What! dost thou pretend to come of a mild errand with all thesepeople at thy back, and all the foolish weapons of war they bring withthem? Prithee, what dost thou mean?

  _D_. The king hastens us to invite the captain and all his men to comeon shore, and has ordered all his men to show them all the civility theycan.

  _W_. Well, and are all those men come to invite us ashore?

  D. They will do you no hurt, if you will come on shore peaceably.

  W. Well, and what dost thou think they can do to us, if we will not?

  D. I would not have them do you any hurt then, neither.

  W. But prithee, friend,