The gunner, overruled by the rest, submitted; but as we broke up the
council, he came to me and very gravely. "My lad," says he, "thou art
born to do a world of mischief; thou hast commenced pirate very young;
but have a care of the gallows, young man; have a care, I say, for thou
wilt be an eminent thief."
I laughed at him, and told him I did not know what I might come to
hereafter; but as our case was now, I should make no scruple to take the
first ship I came at to get our liberty. I only wished we could see one,
and come at her.
When we had made three canoes of some size, we set out on as odd a
voyage as ever man went. We were a little fleet of three ships, and an
army of between twenty and thirty as dangerous fellows as ever lived. We
were bound somewhere and nowhere, for though we knew what we intended to
do, we really did not know what we were doing.
We cruised up and down the coast, but no ship came in sight, and at
last, with more courage than discretion, more resolution than judgment,
we launched for the main coast of Africa.
The voyage was much longer than we expected, and when we were landed
upon the continent it seemed the most desolate, desert, and inhospitable
country in the world.
It was here that we took one of the rashest and wildest and most
desperate resolutions that ever was taken by man; this was to travel
overland through the heart of the country, from the coast of Mozambique
to the coast of Angola or Guinea, a continent of land of at least 1,800
miles, in which journey we had excessive heats to support, impassable
deserts to go over, no carriages, camels, or beasts of any kind to carry
our baggage, innumerable wild and ravenous beasts to encounter, such as
lions, leopards, tigers, lizards, and elephants; we had nations of
savages to encounter, barbarous and brutish to the last degree; hunger
and thirst to struggle with, and, in one word, terrors enough to have
daunted the stoutest hearts that ever were placed in cases of flesh and
blood.
Yet, fearless of all these, we resolved to adventure, and not only did
we accomplish our journey, but we came to a river where there were vast
quantities of gold.
The hardships and difficulties of our march were much mitigated by a
method which I proposed and was found very convenient. This was to
quarrel with some of the negro natives, take them as prisoners, and
binding them, as slaves, cause them to travel with us and make them
carry our baggage.
Accordingly, we secured about sixty lusty young fellows as prisoners,
for the natives stood in great awe of us because of our firearms, and
they not only served us faithfully--the more so as we treated them
without harshness--but were of great help in showing us the way, and in
conversing with the savages we afterwards met.
When we reached the country where the gold was, we at once agreed, in
order that the good harmony and friendship of our company might be
maintained, that however much gold was gotten, it should be brought into
one common stock, and equally divided at last, the negroes sharing with
the rest.
This was done, and at the end of our long journey we found each man's
share amounted to many pounds of gold. We also got a cargo of elephants'
teeth.
We parted at the Gold Coast from our black companions on the best of
terms. Then most of my comrades went off to the Portuguese factories
near Gambia, and I went to Cape Coast Castle, and got passage for,
England, where I arrived in September.
_III.--Quaker and Pirate_
I had neither friend nor relation in England, though it was my native
country; I had not a person to trust with what I had, or to counsel me
to secure or save it; but falling into ill company, and trusting the
keeper of a public-house in Rotherhithe with a great part of my money,
all that great sum, which I got with so much pains and hazard, was gone
in little more than two years' time--spent in all kinds of folly and
wickedness.
Then I began to see it was time to think of further adventures, and I
next shipped myself, in an evil hour to be sure, on a voyage to Cadiz.
On the coast of Spain I fell in with some masters of mischief, and,
among them, one, forwarder than the rest, named Harris, who began an
intimate confidence with me, so that we called one another brothers.
This Harris was afterwards captured by an English man-of-war, and, being
laid in irons, died of grief and anger.
When we were together, he asked me if I had a mind for an adventure that
might make amends for all past misfortunes. I told him, yes, with all my
heart; for I did not care where I went, having nothing to lose, and no
one to leave behind me.
He told me, then, there was a brave fellow, whose name was Wilmot, in
another English ship which rode in the harbour, who had resolved to
mutiny the next morning, and run away with the ship; and that if we
could get strength enough among our ship's company, we might do the
same.
I liked the proposal very well, but we could not bring our part to
perfection. For there were but eleven in our ship who were in the
conspiracy, nor could we get any more that we could trust. So that when
Wilmot began his work, and secured the ship, and gave the signal to us,
we all took a boat and went off to join him.
Being well prepared for all manner of roguery, without the least checks
of conscience, I thus embarked with this crew, which at last brought me
to consort with the most famous pirates of the age.
I, that was an original thief, and a pirate even by inclination before,
was now in my element, and never undertook anything in my life with more
particular satisfaction.
Captain Wilmot--for so we now called him--at once stood out for sea,
steering for the Canaries, and thence onward to the West Indies. Our
ship had twenty-two guns, and we obtained plenty of ammunition from the
Spaniards in exchange for bales of English cloth.
We cruised near two years in those seas of the West Indies, chiefly upon
the Spaniards--not that we made any difficulty of taking English ships,
or Dutch, or French, if they came in our way. But the reason why we
meddled as little with English vessels as we could was, first, because
if they were ships of any force, we were sure of more resistance from
them; and, secondly, because we found the English ships had less booty
when taken; for the Spaniards generally had money on board, and that was
what we best knew what to do with.
We increased our stock considerably in these two years, having taken
60,000 pieces of gold in one vessel, and 100,000 in another; and being
thus first grown rich, we resolved to be strong, too, for we had taken a
brigantine, an excellent sea-boat, able to carry twelve guns, and a
large Spanish frigate-built ship, which afterwards, by the help of good
carpenters, we fitted up to carry twenty-eight guns.
We had also taken two or three sloops from New England and New York,
laden with flour, peas, and barrelled beef and pork, going for Jamaica
and Barbados, and for more beef we went on shore on the island of Cuba,
where we killed as many black cattle as we pleased, though we had very
little salt to cure them.
Out of all the prizes we took here we took their powder and bullets,
their small-arms and cutlasses; and as for their men, we always took the
surgeon and the carpenter, as persons who were of particular use to us
upon many occasions; nor were they always unwilling to go with us.
We had one very merry fellow here, a Quaker, whose name was William
Walters, whom we took out of a sloop bound from Pennsylvania to
Barbados. He was a surgeon and they called him doctor, and we made him
go with us, and take all his implements with him. He was a comic fellow
indeed, a man of very good solid sense, and an excellent surgeon; but,
what was worth all, very good-humoured and pleasant in his conversation,
and a bold, stout, brave fellow too, as any we had among us.
I found William not very averse to go along with us, and yet resolved to
do it so that it might be apparent he was taken away by force. "Friend,"
he says, "thou sayest I must go with thee, and it is not in my power to
resist thee if I would; but I desire thou wilt oblige the master of the
sloop to certify under his hand that I was taken away by force, and
against my will." So I drew up a certificate myself, wherein I wrote
that he was taken away by main force, as a prisoner, by a pirate ship;
and this was signed by the master and all his men.
"Thou hast dealt friendly by me," says he, when we had brought him
aboard, "and I will be plain with thee, whether I came willingly to thee
or not. But thou knowest it is not my business to meddle when thou art
to fight."
"No, no," says the captain, "but you may meddle a little when we share
the money."
"Those things are useful to furnish a surgeon's chest," says William,
and smiled, "but I shall be moderate."
In short, William was a most agreeable companion; but he had the better
of us in this part, that if we were taken we were sure to be hanged, and
he was sure to escape. But he was a sprightly fellow, and fitter to be
captain than any of us.
_IV.--A Respectable Merchant_
We cruised the seas for many years, and after a time William and I had a
ship to ourselves with 400 men in authority under us. As for Captain
Wilmot, we left him with a large company at Madagascar, while we went on
to the East Indies.
At last we had gotten so rich, for we traded in cloves and spices to the
merchants, that William one day proposed to me that we should give up
the kind of life we had been leading. We were then off the coast of
Persia.
"Most people," said William, "leave off trading when they are satisfied
of getting, and are rich enough; for nobody trades for the sake of
trading; much less do men rob for the sake of thieving. It is natural
for men that are abroad to desire to come home again at last, especially
when they are grown rich, and so rich as they would know not what to do
with more if they had it."
"Well, William," said I, "but you have not explained what you mean by
home. Why, man, I am at home; here is my habitation; I never had any
other in my lifetime; I was a kind of charity school-boy; so that I can
have no desire of going anywhere for being rich or poor; for I have
nowhere to go."
"Why," says William, looking a little confused, "hast thou no relatives
or friends in England? No acquaintance; none that thou hast any kindness
or any remains of respect for?"
"Not I, William," said I, "no more than I have in the court of the Great
Mogul. Yet I do not say I like this roving, cruising life so well as
never to give it over. Say anything to me, I will take it kindly." For I
could see he was troubled, and I began to be moved by his gravity.
"There is something to be thought of beyond this way of life," says
William.
"Why, what is that," said I, "except it be death?"
"It is repentance."
"Why," says I, "did you ever know a pirate repent?"
At this he was startled a little, and returned.
"At the gallows I have known one, and I hope thou wilt be the second."
He spoke this very affectionately, with an appearance of concern for me.
"My proposal," William went on, "is for thy good as well as my own. We
may put an end to this kind of life, and repent."
"Look you, William," says I, "let me have your proposal for putting an
end to our present way of living first, and you and I will talk of the
other afterwards."
"Nay," says William, "thou art in the right there; we must never talk of
repenting while we continue pirates."
"Well," says I, "William, that's what I meant; for if we must not
reform, as well as be sorry for what is done, I have no notion what
repentance means: the nature of the thing seems to tell me that the
first step we have to take is to break off this wretched course. Dost
thou think it practicable for us to put an end to our unhappy way of
living, and get off?"
"Yes," says he, "I think it very practicable."
We were then anchored off the city of Bassorah, and one night William
and I went ashore, and sent a note to the boatswain telling him we were
betrayed and bidding him make off with the ship.
By this means we frighted the rogues our comrades; and we had nothing to
do then but to consider how to convert our treasure into things proper
to make us look like merchants, as we were now to be, and not like
freebooters, as we really had been.
Then we clothed ourselves like Armenian merchants, and after many days
reached Venice; and at last we agreed to go to London. For William had a
sister whom he was anxious to see once more.
So we came to England, and some time later I married William's sister,
with whom I am much more happy than I deserve.
* * * * *