The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton

especially we could not put fresh water enough into itfor the voyage; and to make such an adventure would be nothing but mererunning into certain destruction, and yet that nevertheless I was formaking a canoe.

  They answered, that they understood all I had said before well enough,but what I meant by telling them first how dangerous and impossibleit was to make our escape in a canoe, and yet then to advise making acanoe, that they could not understand.

  To this I answered, that I conceived our business was not to attempt ourescape in a canoe, but that, as there were other vessels at sea besidesour ship, and that there were few nations that lived on the sea-shorethat were so barbarous, but that they went to sea in some boats orother, our business was to cruise along the coast of the island, whichwas very long, and to seize upon the first we could get that was betterthan our own, and so from that to another, till perhaps we might at lastget a good ship to carry us wherever we pleased to go.

  "Excellent advice," says one of them. "Admirable advice," says another."Yes, yes," says the third (which was the gunner), "the English dog hasgiven excellent advice; but it is just the way to bring us all tothe gallows. The rogue has given us devilish advice, indeed, to goa-thieving, till from a little vessel we came to a great ship, and so weshall turn downright pirates, the end of which is to be hanged."

  "You may call us pirates," says another, "if you will, and if we fallinto bad hands, we may be used like pirates; but I care not for that,I'll be a pirate, or anything, nay, I'll be hanged for a pirate ratherthan starve here, therefore I think the advice is very good." And sothey cried all, "Let us have a canoe." The gunner, over-ruled by therest, submitted; but as we broke up the council, he came to me, takesme by the hand, and, looking into the palm of my hand, and into my facetoo, very gravely, "My lad," says he, "thou art born to do a world ofmischief; thou hast commenced pirate very young; but have a care ofthe gallows, young man; have a care, I say, for thou wilt be an eminentthief."

  I laughed at him, and told him I did not know what I might come tohereafter, but as our case was now, I should make no scruple to take thefirst ship I came at to get our liberty; I only wished we could see one,and come at her. Just while we were talking, one of our men that was atthe door of our hut, told us that the carpenter, who it seems was upon ahill at a distance, cried out, "A sail! a sail!"

  We all turned out immediately; but, though it was very clear weather,we could see nothing; but the carpenter continuing to halloo to us, "Asail! a sail!" away we run up the hill, and there we saw a ship plainly;but it was at a very great distance, too far for us to make any signalto her. However, we made a fire upon the hill, with all the wood wecould get together, and made as much smoke as possible. The wind wasdown, and it was almost calm; but as we thought, by a perspective glasswhich the gunner had in his pocket, her sails were full, and she stoodaway large with the wind at E.N.E., taking no notice of our signal, butmaking for the Cape de Bona Speranza; so we had no comfort from her.

  We went, therefore, immediately to work about our intended canoe; and,having singled out a very large tree to our minds, we fell to work withher; and having three good axes among us, we got it down, but it wasfour days' time first, though we worked very hard too. I do not rememberwhat wood it was, or exactly what dimensions, but I remember that it wasa very large one, and we were as much encouraged when we launched it,and found it swam upright and steady, as we would have been at anothertime if we had had a good man-of-war at our command.

  She was so very large, that she carried us all very, very easily, andwould have carried two or three tons of baggage with us; so that webegan to consult about going to sea directly to Goa; but many otherconsiderations checked that thought, especially when we came to looknearer into it; such as want of provisions, and no casks for freshwater; no compass to steer by; no shelter from the breach of the highsea, which would certainly founder us; no defence from the heat of theweather, and the like; so that they all came readily into my project, tocruise about where we were, and see what might offer.

  Accordingly, to gratify our fancy, we went one day all out to sea in hertogether, and we were in a very fair way to have had enough of it;for when she had us all on board, and that we were gotten about halfa league to sea, there happening to be a pretty high swell of the sea,though little or no wind, yet she wallowed so in the sea, that we all ofus thought she would at last wallow herself bottom up; so we set allto work to get her in nearer the shore, and giving her fresh way in thesea, she swam more steady, and with some hard work we got her under theland again.

  We were now at a great loss; the natives were civil enough to us, andcame often to discourse with us; one time they brought one whom theyshowed respect to as a king with them, and they set up a long polebetween them and us, with a great tassel of hair hanging, not on thetop, but something above the middle of it, adorned with little chains,shells, bits of brass, and the like; and this, we understood afterwards,was a token of amity and friendship; and they brought down to usvictuals in abundance, cattle, fowls, herbs, and roots; but we were inthe utmost confusion on our side; for we had nothing to buy with, orexchange for; and as to giving us things for nothing they had no notionof that again. As to our money, it was mere trash to them, they had novalue for it; so that we were in a fair way to be starved. Had we hadbut some toys and trinkets, brass chains, baubles, glass beads, or, ina word, the veriest trifles that a shipload of would not have been worththe freight, we might have bought cattle and provisions enough for anarmy, or to victual a fleet of men-of-war; but for gold or silver wecould get nothing.

  Upon this we were in a strange consternation. I was but a young fellow,but I was for falling upon them with our firearms, and taking all thecattle from them, and send them to the devil to stop their hunger,rather than be starved ourselves; but I did not consider that this mighthave brought ten thousand of them down upon us the next day; and thoughwe might have killed a vast number of them, and perhaps have frightedthe rest, yet their own desperation, and our small number, would haveanimated them so that, one time or other, they would have destroyed usall.

  In the middle of our consultation, one of our men who had been a kindof a cutler, or worker in iron, started up and asked the carpenter if,among all his tools, he could not help him to a file. "Yes," says thecarpenter, "I can, but it is a small one." "The smaller the better,"says the other. Upon this he goes to work, and first by heating a pieceof an old broken chisel in the fire, and then with the help of his file,he made himself several kinds of tools for his work. Then he takes threeor four pieces of eight, and beats them out with a hammer upon a stone,till they were very broad and thin; then he cuts them out into the shapeof birds and beasts; he made little chains of them for bracelets andnecklaces, and turned them into so many devices of his own head, that itis hardly to be expressed.

  When he had for about a fortnight exercised his head and hands at thiswork, we tried the effect of his ingenuity; and, having another meetingwith the natives, were surprised to see the folly of the poor people.For a little bit of silver cut in the shape of a bird, we had two cows,and, which was our loss, if it had been in brass, it had been still ofmore value. For one of the bracelets made of chain-work, we had as muchprovision of several sorts, as would fairly have been worth, in England,fifteen or sixteen pounds; and so of all the rest. Thus, that which whenit was in coin was not worth sixpence to us, when thus convertedinto toys and trifles, was worth a hundred times its real value, andpurchased for us anything we had occasion for.

  In this condition we lived upwards of a year, but all of us began to bevery much tired of it, and, whatever came of it, resolved to attemptan escape. We had furnished ourselves with no less than three verygood canoes; and as the monsoons, or trade-winds, generally affect thatcountry, blowing in most parts of this island one six months of a yearone way, and the other six months another way, we concluded we might beable to bear the sea well enough. But always, when we came to look intoit, the want of fresh water was the thing that put us off from such anadventure, for it i
s a prodigious length, and what no man on earth couldbe able to perform without water to drink.

  Being thus prevailed upon by our own reason to set the thoughts of thatvoyage aside, we had then but two things before us; one was, to put tosea the other way; viz., west, and go away for the Cape of Good Hope,where, first or last, we should meet with some of our own country ships,or else to put for the mainland of Africa, and either travel by land,or sail along the coast towards the Red Sea, where we should, first orlast, find a ship of some nation or other, that would take us up; orperhaps we might take them up, which, by-the-bye, was the thing thatalways ran in my head.

  It was our ingenious cutler, whom ever after we called silversmith, thatproposed this; but the gunner told him, that he had been in the Red Seain a Malabar sloop, and he knew this, that if we went into the Red Sea,we should