A New Voyage Round the World by a Course Never Sailed Before. Defoe Daniel
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return to them that had been to be understood, but we knew nothing of any agreed signal; however, I resolved that I would send a boat on shore, well manned, to learn, if possible, what the meaning of all this was; and, accordingly, in the morning, I sent our long-boat and shallop on shore, with two-and-thirty men in them both, to get intelligence; ordering them, if possible, to speak with somebody, before they went on shore, and know how things stood; that then, if it was a party of the pirates, they should by no means come near them, but parley at a distance, till they knew the meaning of their behaviour.
As soon as my men came near the shore, they saw plainly that it was a body of above a hundred of the pirates; but seeing them so strong, they stood off, and would not come nearer, nor near enough to parley with them; upon this, the men on shore got one of the islanders' canvass boats, or rather boats made of skins, which are but sorry ones at best, and put off, with two men to manage the sail, and one sitter, and two paddles for oars and away they came towards us, carrying a flag of truce, that is to say, an old white rag; how they came to save so much linen among them all, was very hard to guess.
Our men could do no less than receive their ambassador, and a flag of truce gave no shadow of apprehension, especially considering the figure they made, and that the men on shore had no other boats to surprise or attack us with; so they lay by upon their oars till they came up, when they soon understood who they were, viz. – that they were the gunner's selected men; that they came too late to have their signal perceived from the other ship, which was gone out of sight of the place they were directed to; that they had with great difficulty, and five days and nights' marching, got through a woody and almost impassable country to come at us; that they had fetched a circuit of near a hundred miles to avoid being attacked by their comrades, and that they were pursued by them with their whole body, and therefore they begged to be taken on board; they added, if they should be overtaken by their comrades, they should be all cut in pieces, for that they had broke away from them by force, and moreover had been obliged, at the first of their pursuit, to face about and fire among them, by which they had killed six or seven of them, and wounded others, and that they had sworn they would give them no quarter, if they could come fairly up with them.
Our men told them they must be contented to remain on shore, where they were, for some time, for that they could do nothing till they had been on board, and acquainted their captain with all the particulars; so they came back immediately to me for orders.
As to me, I was a little uneasy at the thoughts of taking them on board; I knew they were a gang of pirates at best, and what they might do I knew not, but I sent them this message, that though all their tale might be very good for aught I knew, yet that I must take so much time as to send an express to the captain of the other ship, to be informed of the truth of it; and that if he brought a satisfactory answer, I would send for them all on board.
This was very uncomfortable news to them, for they expected to be surrounded every hour by their comrades, from whom they were to look for no mercy; however, seeing no remedy, they resolved to march about twenty miles farther south, and lie by in a place near the sea, where we agreed to send to them; concluding that their comrades not finding them near the place where we lay, would not imagine they could be gone farther that way. As they guessed, so it proved, for the pirates came to the shore, where they saw tokens enough of their having been there, but seeing they could not be found, concluded they were all gone on board our ship.
The wind proving contrary, it was no less than four days before our boat came back, so that the poor men were held in great suspense: but when they returned, they brought the gunner with them who had selected those men from all the rest for our new ship; and who, when he came, gave me a long account of them, and what care he had taken to pick them out for our service, delivering me also a letter from my new captain to the same purpose: upon all which concurring circumstances, we concluded to take them on board; so we sent our boats for them, which, at twice, brought them all on board, and very stout young fellows they were.
When they had been on board some days and refreshed themselves, I concluded to send all on board the new ship; but, upon advice, I resolved to send sixty of my own men joined to forty of these, and keep thirty-four of them on board my ship; for their number was just seventy-four, which with the gunner and his twenty-one men, and the sixteen men who came with the worthy ambassadors, and would not go on shore again, made one hundred and twelve men; and, as we all thought, were enough for us, though we took in between forty and fifty more afterwards.
We were now ready to go to sea, and I caused the new ship and the brigantine to come away from the place where they lay, and join us; which they did, and then we unloaded part of our provisions and ammunition; of which, as I observed at first, we had taken in double quantity; and, having furnished the new ship with a proportion of all things necessary, we prepared for our voyage.
I should here give a long account of a second infernal conspiracy, which my two remaining prisoners had formed among the men, which was to betray the new ship to the pirates; but it is too long a story to relate here; nor did I make it public among the ship's company: but as it was only, as it were, laid down in a scheme, and that they had no opportunity to put it in practice, I thought it was better to make as little noise about it as I could. So I ordered my new captain, for it was he who discovered it to me, to punish them in their own way, and, without taking notice of their new villanies, to set them on shore, and leave them to take their fate with a set of rogues whom they had intended to join with, and whose profession was likely, some time or other, to bring them to the gallows. And thus I was rid of two incorrigible mutineers; what became of them afterwards I never heard.
We were now a little fleet, viz., two large ships and a brigantine, well manned, and furnished with all sorts of necessaries for any voyage or any enterprise that was fit for men in our situation to undertake; and, particularly, here I made a full design of the whole voyage, to be again openly declared to the men, and had them asked, one by one, if they were willing and resolved to undertake it, which they all very cheerfully answered in the affirmative.
Here we had an opportunity to furnish ourselves with a plentiful stock of excellent beef, which, as I said before, we cured with little or no salt, by drying it in the sun; and, I believe, we laid in such a store, that, in all our three vessels, we had near a hundred and fifty tons of it; and it was of excellent use to us, and served us through the whole voyage. There was little else to be had in this place that was fit to be carried to sea; except that, as there was plenty of milk, some of our men, who were more dexterous than others, made several large cheeses; nor were they very far short of English cheese, only that we were but indifferent dairy folks. Our men made some butter also, and salted it to keep, but it grew rank and oily, and was of little use to us.
It was on the 15th of December that we left this place, a country fruitful, populous, full of cattle, large and excellent good beef, and very fat; and the land able to produce all manner of good things; but the people wild, naked, black, barbarous, perfectly untractable, and insensible of any state of life being better than their own.
We stood away towards the shore of Arabia, till we passed the line, and came into the latitude of 18° north, and then stood away east, and east-by-north, for the English factories of Surat, and the coast of Malabar; not that we had any business there, or designed any, only that we had a mind to take on board a quantity of rice, if we could come at it; which at last, we effected by a Portuguese vessel, which we met with at sea, bound to Goa, from the Gulf of Persia. We chased her, and brought her too, indeed, as if we resolved to attack and take the ship; but, finding a quantity of rice on board, which was what we wanted, with a parcel of coffee, we took all the rice, but paid the supercargo, who was a Persian or Armenian merchant, very honestly for the whole parcel, his full price, and to his satisfaction; as for the coffee, we had no occasion for it. We put in at several ports on the Indian coast for fresh water and fresh provisions, but came near none of the factories, because we had no mind to discover ourselves; for though we were to sail through the very centre of the India trade, yet it was perfectly without any business among them. We met indeed on this coast with some pearl fishers, who had been in the mouth of the Arabian Gulf, and had a large quantity of pearl on board. I would have traded with them for goods, but they understood nothing but money, and I refused to part with it; upon which the fellows gave our supercargo some scornful language, which though he did not well understand what they said, yet he pretended to take it as a great