Upon this Will Atkins cried out, ‘‘For God’s sake, Captain, give me quarter; what have I done? They have been all as bad as I’’; which, by the way, was not true neither; for it seems this Will Atkins was the first man that laid hold of the captain, when they first mutinied, and used him barbarously, in tying his hands, and giving him injurious language. However, the captain told him he must lay down his arms at discretion, and trust to the governor’s mercy; by which he meant me, for they all called me governor.
In a word, they all laid down their arms and begged their lives; and I sent the man that had parleyed with them and two more, who bound them all; and then my great army of fifty men, which, particularly with those three, were all but eight, came up and seized upon them all and upon their boat, only that I kept myself and one more out of sight, for reasons of state.
Our next work was to repair the boat and to think of seizing the ship; and as for the captain, now he had leisure to parley with them, he expostulated with them upon the villainy of their practices with him, and at length upon the further wickedness of their design, and how certainly it must bring them to misery and distress in the end, and perhaps to the gallows.
They all appeared very penitent and begged hard for their lives; as for that, he told them they were none of his prisoners, but the commander’s of the island; that they thought they had set him on shore in a barren uninhabited island, but it had pleased God so to direct them that the island was inhabited, and that the governor was an Englishman; that he might hang them all there, if he pleased; but as he had given them all quarter, he supposed he would send them to England, to be dealt with there as justice required, except Atkins, who he was commanded by the governor to advise to prepare for death; for that he would be hanged in the morning.
Though this was all a fiction of his own, yet it had its desired effect; Atkins fell upon his knees to beg the captain to intercede with the governor for his life; and all the rest begged of him, for God’s sake, that they might not be sent to England.
We Seize the Ship
IT NOW occurred to me that the time of our deliverance was come, and that it would be a most easy thing to bring these fellows in to be hearty in getting possession of the ship; so I retired in the dark from them, that they might not see what kind of a governor they had, and called the captain to me; when I called, as at a good distance, one of the men was ordered to speak again and say to the captain, ‘‘Captain, the commander calls for you’’; and presently the captain replied, ‘‘Tell his excellency, I am just a-coming.’’ This more perfectly amused them, and they all believed that the commander was just by with his fifty men.
Upon the captain’s coming to me, I told him my project for seizing the ship, which he liked of wonderfully well, and resolved to put it in execution the next morning.
But in order to execute it with more art, and security of success, I told him we must divide the prisoners, and that he should go and take Atkins and two more of the worst of them, and send them pinioned to the cave where the others lay. This was committed to Friday and the two men who came on shore with the captain.
They conveyed them to the cave, as to a prison; and it was indeed a dismal place, especially to men in their condition.
The other I ordered to my bower, as I called it, of which I have given a full description; and as it was fenced in, and they pinioned, the place was secure enough, considering they were upon their behaviour.
To these in the morning I sent the captain, who was to enter into a parley with them, in a word, to try them, and tell me, whether he thought they might be trusted or no, to go on board and surprise the ship. He talked to them of the injury done him, of the condition they were brought to; and that though the governor had given them quarter for their lives, as to the present action, yet that if they were sent to England, they would all be hanged in chains, to be sure; but that if they would join in so just an attempt as to recover the ship, he would have the governor’s engagement for their pardon.
Anyone may guess how readily such a proposal would be accepted by men in their condition; they fell down on their knees to the captain and promised with the deepest imprecations that they would be faithful to him to the last drop, and that they should owe their lives to him and would go with him all over the world; that they would own him for a father to them as long as they lived.
‘‘Well,’’ says the captain, ‘‘I must go and tell the governor what you say, and see what I can do to bring him to consent to it.’’ So he brought me an account of the temper he found them in; and that he verily believed they would be faithful.
However, that we might be very secure, I told him he should go back again and choose out five of them, and tell them they might see that he did not want9 men; that he would take out those five to be his assistants, and that the governor would keep the other two and the three that were sent prisoners to the castle (my cave) as hostages, for the fidelity of those five; and that if they proved unfaithful in the execution, the five hostages should be hanged in chains alive upon the shore.
This looked severe, and convinced them that the governor was in earnest; however, they had no way left them but to accept it; and it was now the business of the prisoners, as much as of the captain, to persuade the other five to do their duty.
Our strength was now thus ordered for the expedition. 1. The captain, his mate, and passenger. 2. Then the two prisoners of the first gang, to whom, having their characters from the captain, I had given their liberty,and trusted them with arms. 3. The other two, whom I had kept till now in my bower, pinioned; but, upon the captain’s motion, had now released. 4. These five released at last. So that they were twelve in all, besides five we kept prisoners in the cave, and the two hostages.
I asked the captain if he was willing to venture with these hands on board the ship; for as for me and my man Friday, I did not think it was proper for us to stir, having seven men left behind, and it was employment enough for us to keep them asunder, and supply them with victuals.
As to the five in the cave, I resolved to keep them fast; but Friday went in twice a day to them, to supply them with necessaries; and I made the other two carry provisions to a certain distance, where Friday was to take it.
When I showed myself to the two hostages, it was with the captain, who told them I was the person the governor had ordered to look after them, and that it was the governor’s pleasure they should not stir anywhere but by my direction; that if they did, they should be fetched into the castle, and be laid in irons; so that as we never suffered them to see me as governor, so I now appeared as another person, and spoke of the governor, the garrison, the castle, and the like, upon all occasions.
The captain now had no difficulty before him, but to furnish his two boats, stop the breach of one, and man them. He made his passenger captain of one, with four other men; and himself and his mate and five more went in the other. And they contrived their business very well, for they came up to the ship about midnight. As soon as they came within call of the ship, he made Robinson hail them and tell them they had brought off the men and the boat, but that it was a long time before they had found them, and the like; holding them in a chat till they came to the ship’s side; when the captain and the mate, entering first with their arms, immediately knocked down the second mate and carpenter with the butt-end of their muskets. Being very faithfully seconded by their men, they secured all the rest that were upon the main and quarter decks and began to fasten the hatches to keep them down who were below, when the other boat and their men, entering at the fore chains, secured the forecastle of the ship and the scuttle which went down into the cook-room, making three men they found there prisoners.
When this was done, and all safe upon deck, the captain ordered the mate with three men to break into the roundhouse, where the new rebel captain lay, and having taken the alarm, was gotten up, and with two men and a boy had gotten firearms in their hands; and when the mate with a crow split open the door, the new captain and his m
en fired boldly among them and wounded the mate with a musket ball, which broke his arm, and wounded two more of the men, but killed nobody.
The mate, calling for help, rushed, however, into the roundhouse, wounded as he was, and with his pistol shot the new captain through the head, the bullet entering at his mouth, and came out again behind one of his ears, so that he never spoke a word; upon which the rest yielded, and the ship was taken effectually, without any more lives lost.
As soon as the ship was thus secured, the captain ordered seven guns to be fired, which was the signal agreed upon with me, to give me notice of his success, which you may be sure I was very glad to hear, having sat watching upon the shore for it till near two of the clock in the morning.
Having thus heard the signal plainly, I laid me down; and it having been a day of great fatigue to me, I slept very sound, till I was something surprised with the noise of a gun; and presently starting up, I heard a man call me by the name of ‘‘Governor, Governor,’’ and presently I knew the captain’s voice, when, climbing up to the top of the hill, there he stood, and pointing to the ship, he embraced me in his arms. ‘‘My dear friend and deliverer, ’’ says he, ‘‘there’s your ship, for she is all yours, and so are we and all that belong to her.’’ I cast my eyes to the ship, and there she rode within little more than half a mile of the shore; for they had weighed her anchor as soon as they were masters of her; and the weather being fair, had brought her to an anchor just against the mouth of the little creek; and the tide being up, the captain had brought the pinnace in near the place where I first landed my rafts, and so landed just at my door.
I was at first ready to sink down with the surprise. For I saw my deliverance indeed visibly put into my hands, all things easy, and a large ship just ready to carry me away whither I pleased to go. At first, for some time, I was not able to answer him one word; but as he had taken me in his arms, I held fast by him or I should have fallen to the ground.
He perceived the surprise, and immediately pulls a bottle out of his pocket, and gave me a dram of cordial, which he had brought on purpose for me; after I drank it, I sat down upon the ground; and though it brought me to myself, yet it was a good while before I could speak a word to him.
All this while the poor man was in as great an ecstasy as I, only not under any surprise, as I was; and he said a thousand kind tender things to me, to compose me and bring me to myself; but such was the flood of joy in my breast that it put all my spirits into confusion; at last it broke out into tears, and in a little while after I recovered my speech.
Then I took my turn and embraced him as my deliverer, and we rejoiced together. I told him I looked upon him as a man sent from Heaven to deliver me, and that the whole transaction seemed to be a chain of wonders; that such things as these were the testimonies we had of a secret hand of Providence governing the world, and an evidence that the eyes of an infinite Power could search into the remotest corner of the world, and send help to the miserable whenever He pleased.
I forgot not to lift up my heart in thankfulness to Heaven; and what heart could forbear to bless Him, who had not only in a miraculous manner provided for one in such a wilderness and in such a desolate condition, but from whom every deliverance must always be acknowledged to proceed!
When we had talked a while, the captain told me he had brought me some little refreshment, such as the ship afforded, and such as the wretches that had been so long his masters had not plundered him of. Upon this he called aloud to the boat, and bade his men bring the things ashore that were for the governor; and indeed it was a present, as if I had been one, not that was to be carried away along with them, but as if I had been to dwell upon the island still and they were to go without me.
First, he had brought me a case of bottles full of excellent cordial waters, six large bottles of Madeira wine; the bottles held two quarts apiece; two pound of excellent good tobacco, twelve good pieces of the ship’s beef, and six pieces of pork, with a bag of peas, and about a hundredweight of biscuit.
He brought me also a box of sugar, a box of flour, a bag full of lemons, and two bottles of lime juice, and abundance of other things. But besides these, and what was a thousand times more useful to me, he brought me six clean new shirts, six very good neckcloths, two pair of gloves, one pair of shoes, a hat, and one pair of stockings, and a very good suit of clothes of his own, which had been worn but very little. In a word, he clothed me from head to foot.
It was a very kind and agreeable present, as anyone may imagine, to one in my circumstances. But never was anything in the world of that kind so unpleasant, awkward, and uneasy as it was to me to wear such clothes at their first putting on.
After these ceremonies passed, and after all his good things were brought into my little apartment, we began to consult what was to be done with the prisoners we had; for it was worth considering whether we might venture to take them away with us or no, especially two of them, whom we knew to be incorrigible and refractory to the last degree; and the captain said he knew they were such rogues that there was no obliging them, and if he did carry them away, it must be in irons, as malefactors, to be delivered over to justice at the first English colony he could come at; and I found that the captain himself was very anxious about it.
Upon this, I told him that if he desired it, I durst undertake to bring the two men he spoke of to make it their own request that he should leave them upon the island. ‘‘I should be very glad of that,’’ says the captain, ‘‘with all my heart.’’
‘‘Well,’’ says I, ‘‘I will send for them up, and talk with them for you’’; so I caused Friday and the two hostages, for they were now discharged, their comrades having performed their promise; I say, I caused them to go to the cave and bring up the five men, pinioned as they were, to the bower, and keep them there till I came.
After some time I came thither dressed in my new habit, and now I was called governor again; being all met, and the captain with me, I caused the men to be brought before me, and I told them I had had a full account of their villainous behaviour to the captain, and how they had run away with the ship and were preparing to commit further robberies, but that Providence had ensnared them in their own ways and that they were fallen into the pit which they had digged for others.
I let them know that by my direction the ship had been seized, that she lay now in the road, and they might see by and by that their new captain had received the reward of his villainy; for that they might see him hanging at the yardarm.
That as to them, I wanted to know what they had to say, why I should not execute them as pirates taken in the fact, as by my commission they could not doubt I had authority to do.
One of them answered in the name of the rest that they had nothing to say but this, that when they were taken, the captain promised them their lives, and they humbly implored my mercy. But I told them I knew not what mercy to show them; for, as for myself, I had resolved to quit the island with all my men, and had taken passage with the captain to go for England. And as for the captain, he could not carry them to England other than as prisoners in irons, to be tried for mutiny and running away with the ship; the consequence of which, they must needs know, would be the gallows; so that I could not tell which was best for them, unless they had a mind to take their fate in the island; if they desired that, I did not care, as I had liberty to leave it; I had some inclination to give them their lives, if they thought they could shift on shore.
They seemed very thankful for it, said they would much rather venture to stay there than to be carried to England to be hanged; so I left it on that issue.
However, the captain seemed to make some difficulty of it, as if he durst not leave them there. Upon this I seemed a little angry with the captain, and told him that they were my prisoners, not his; and that seeing I had offered them so much favour, I would be as good as my word; and that if he did not think fit to consent to it, I would set them at liberty, as I found them; and if he did not like it, he might tak
e them again if he could catch them.
Upon this they appeared very thankful, and I accordingly set them at liberty, and bade them retire into the woods, to the place whence they came, and I would leave them some firearms, some ammunition, and some directions how they should live very well, if they thought fit.
Upon this I prepared to go on board the ship, but told the captain that I would stay that night to prepare my things, and desired him to go on board in the meantime, and keep all right in the ship, and send the boat on shore the next day for me; ordering him in the meantime to cause the new captain who was killed to be hanged at the yardarm, that these men might see him.
When the captain was gone, I sent for the men up to me to my apartment and entered seriously into discourse with them of their circumstances. I told them I thought they had made a right choice; that if the captain carried them away, they would certainly be hanged. I showed them the new captain hanging at the yardarm of the ship, and told them they had nothing less to expect.
When they had all declared their willingness to stay, I then told them I would let them into the story of my living there, and put them into the way of making it easy to them. Accordingly I gave them the whole history of the place and of my coming to it; showed them my fortifications, the way I made my bread, planted my corn, cured my grapes; and in a word, all that was necessary to make them easy. I told them the story also of the sixteen Spaniards that were to be expected; for whom I left a letter, and made them promise to treat them in common with themselves.
I left them my firearms, viz., five muskets, three fowling pieces, and three swords. I had above a barrel and half of powder left; for after the first year or two I used but little, and wasted none. I gave them a description of the way I managed the goats, and directions to milk and fatten them, and to make both butter and cheese.