upon further inquiry, we found that there were seven or eight of the
negroes very much wounded, two or three of them with shot, whereof one
had his leg broken and lay in a miserable condition, the flesh being
mortified, and, as our friend William said, in two days more he would
have died. William was a most dexterous surgeon, and he showed it in
this cure; for though all the surgeons we had on board both our ships
(and we had no less than five that called themselves bred surgeons,
besides two or three who were pretenders or assistants)--though all
these gave their opinions that the negro's leg must be cut off, and
that his life could not be saved without it; that the mortification had
touched the marrow in the bone, that the tendons were mortified, and
that he could never have the use of his leg if it should be cured,
William said nothing in general, but that his opinion was otherwise, and
that he desired the wound might be searched, and that he would then
tell them further. Accordingly he went to work with the leg; and, as
he desired that he might have some of the surgeons to assist him, we
appointed him two of the ablest of them to help, and all of them to look
on, if they thought fit.
William went to work his own way, and some of them pretended to find
fault at first. However, he proceeded and searched every part of the leg
where he suspected the mortification had touched it; in a word, he cut
off a great deal of mortified flesh, in all which the poor fellow felt
no pain. William proceeded till he brought the vessels which he had cut
to bleed, and the man to cry out; then he reduced the splinters of the
bone, and, calling for help, set it, as we call it, and bound it up, and
laid the man to rest, who found himself much easier than before.
At the first opening the surgeons began to triumph; the mortification
seemed to spread, and a long red streak of blood appeared from the wound
upwards to the middle of the man's thigh, and the surgeons told me the
man would die in a few hours. I went to look at it, and found William
himself under some surprise; but when I asked him how long he thought
the poor fellow could live, he looked gravely at me, and said, "As long
as thou canst; I am not at all apprehensive of his life," said he, "but
I would cure him, if I could, without making a cripple of him." I found
he was not just then upon the operation as to his leg, but was mixing
up something to give the poor creature, to repel, as I thought, the
spreading contagion, and to abate or prevent any feverish temper that
might happen in the blood; after which he went to work again, and opened
the leg in two places above the wound, cutting out a great deal of
mortified flesh, which it seemed was occasioned by the bandage, which
had pressed the parts too much; and withal, the blood being at the time
in a more than common disposition to mortify, might assist to spread it.
Well, our friend William conquered all this, cleared the spreading
mortification, and the red streak went off again, the flesh began to
heal, and matter to run; and in a few days the man's spirits began to
recover, his pulse beat regular, he had no fever, and gathered strength
daily; and, in a word, he was a perfect sound man in about ten weeks,
and we kept him amongst us, and made him an able seaman. But to return
to the ship: we never could come at a certain information about it, till
some of the negroes which we kept on board, and whom we taught to speak
English, gave the account of it afterwards, and this maimed man in
particular.
We inquired, by all the signs and motions we could imagine, what was
become of the people, and yet we could get nothing from them. Our
lieutenant was for torturing some of them to make them confess,
but William opposed that vehemently; and when he heard it was under
consideration he came to me. "Friend," says he, "I make a request to
thee not to put any of these poor wretches to torment." "Why, William,"
said I, "why not? You see they will not give any account of what is
become of the white men." "Nay," says William, "do not say so; I suppose
they have given thee a full account of every particular of it." "How
so?" says I; "pray what are we the wiser for all their jabbering?"
"Nay," says William, "that may be thy fault, for aught I know; thou wilt
not punish the poor men because they cannot speak English; and perhaps
they never heard a word of English before. Now, I may very well suppose
that they have given thee a large account of everything; for thou seest
with what earnestness, and how long, some of them have talked to thee;
and if thou canst not understand their language, nor they thine, how can
they help that? At the best, thou dost but suppose that they have not
told thee the whole truth of the story; and, on the contrary, I suppose
they have; and how wilt thou decide the question, whether thou art right
or whether I am right? Besides, what can they say to thee when thou
askest them a question upon the torture, and at the same time they do
not understand the question, and thou dost not know whether they say ay
or no?"
It is no compliment to my moderation to say I was convinced by these
reasons; and yet we had all much ado to keep our second lieutenant from
murdering some of them, to make them tell. What if they had told? He did
not understand one word of it; but he would not be persuaded but that
the negroes must needs understand him when he asked them whether the
ship had any boat or no, like ours, and what was become of it.
But there was no remedy but to wait till we made these people understand
English, and to adjourn the story till that time. The case was thus:
where they were taken on board the ship, that we could never understand,
because they never knew the English names which we give to those coasts,
or what nation they were who belonged to the ship, because they knew not
one tongue from another; but thus far the negro I examined, who was the
same whose leg William had cured, told us, that they did not speak the
same language as we spoke, nor the same our Portuguese spoke; so that in
all probability they must be French or Dutch.
Then he told us that the white men used them barbarously; that they beat
them unmercifully; that one of the negro men had a wife and two negro
children, one a daughter, about sixteen years old; that a white man
abused the negro man's wife, and afterwards his daughter, which, as he
said, made all the negro men mad; and that the woman's husband was in a
great rage; at which the white man was so provoked that he threatened
to kill him; but, in the night, the negro man, being loose, got a great
club, by which he made us understand he meant a handspike, and that when
the same Frenchman (if it was a Frenchman) came among them again, he
began again to abuse the negro man's wife, at which the negro, taking up
the handspike, knocked his brains out at one blow; and then taking the
key from him with which he usually unlocked the handcuffs which the
negroes were fettered with, he set about a hundred of them at liberty,
who, getting up upon the deck by the same scuttle that the white men
came down, and taking the man's cutlass who was killed, and laying hold
of what came next them, they fell upon the men that were upon the
deck, and killed them all, and afterwards those they found upon the
forecastle; that the captain and his other men, who were in the cabin
and the round-house, defended themselves with great courage, and shot
out at the loopholes at them, by which he and several other men were
wounded, and some killed; but that they broke into the round-house after
a long dispute, where they killed two of the white men, but owned that
the two white men killed eleven of their men before they could break
in; and then the rest, having got down the scuttle into the great cabin,
wounded three more of them.
That, after this, the gunner of the ship having secured himself in the
gun-room, one of his men hauled up the long-boat close under the stern,
and putting into her all the arms and ammunition they could come at, got
all into the boat, and afterwards took in the captain, and those that
were with him, out of the great cabin. When they were all thus embarked,
they resolved to lay the ship aboard again, and try to recover it. That
they boarded the ship in a desperate manner, and killed at first all
that stood in their way; but the negroes being by this time all loose,
and having gotten some arms, though they understood nothing of powder
and bullet, or guns, yet the men could never master them. However, they
lay under the ship's bow, and got out all the men they had left in the
cook-room, who had maintained themselves there, notwithstanding all the
negroes could do, and with their small-arms killed between thirty and
forty of the negroes, but were at last forced to leave them.
They could give me no account whereabouts this was, whether near the
coast of Africa, or far off, or how long it was before the ship fell
into our hands; only, in general, it was a great while ago, as they
called it; and, by all we could learn, it was within two or three days
after they had set sail from the coast. They told us that they had
killed about thirty of the white men, having knocked them on the head
with crows and handspikes, and such things as they could get; and one
strong negro killed three of them with an iron crow, after he was shot
twice through the body; and that he was afterwards shot through the
head by the captain himself at the door of the round-house, which he had
split open with the crow; and this we supposed was the occasion of the
great quantity of blood which we saw at the round-house door.
The same negro told us that they threw all the powder and shot they
could find into the sea, and they would have thrown the great guns into
the sea if they could have lifted them. Being asked how they came
to have their sails in such a condition, his answer was, "They no
understand; they no know what the sails do;" that was, they did not so
much as know that it was the sails that made the ship go, or understand
what they meant, or what to do with them. When we asked him whither they
were going, he said they did not know, but believed they should go home
to their own country again. I asked him, in particular, what he thought
we were when we first came up with them? He said they were terribly
frighted, believing we were the same white men that had gone away in
their boats, and were come again in a great ship, with the two boats
with them, and expected they would kill them all.
This was the account we got out of them, after we had taught them
to speak English, and to understand the names and use of the things
belonging to the ship which they had occasion to speak of; and we
observed that the fellows were too innocent to dissemble in their
relation, and that they all agreed in the particulars, and were always
in the same story, which confirmed very much the truth of what they
said.
Having taken this ship, our next difficulty was, what to do with the
negroes. The Portuguese in the Brazils would have bought them all of us,
and been glad of the purchase, if we had not showed ourselves enemies
there, and been known for pirates; but, as it was, we durst not go
ashore anywhere thereabouts, or treat with any of the planters, because
we should raise the whole country upon us; and, if there were any such
things as men-of-war in any of their ports, we should be as sure to be
attacked by them, and by all the force they had by land or sea.
Nor could we think of any better success if we went northward to our own
plantations. One while we determined to carry them all away to Buenos
Ayres, and sell them there to the Spaniards; but they were really too
many for them to make use of; and to carry them round to the South Seas,
which was the only remedy that was left, was so far that we should be no
way able to subsist them for so long a voyage.
At last, our old, never-failing friend, William, helped us out again, as
he had often done at a dead lift. His proposal was this, that he should
go as master of the ship, and about twenty men, such as we could best
trust, and attempt to trade privately, upon the coast of Brazil, with
the planters, not at the principal ports, because that would not be
admitted.
We all agreed to this, and appointed to go away ourselves towards the
Rio de la Plata, where we had thought of going before, and to wait for
him, not there, but at Port St Pedro, as the Spaniards call it, lying
at the mouth of the river which they call Rio Grande, and where the
Spaniards had a small fort and a few people, but we believe there was
nobody in it.
Here we took up our station, cruising off and on, to see if we could
meet any ships going to or coming from the Buenos Ayres or the Rio de
la Plata; but we met with nothing worth notice. However, we employed
ourselves in things necessary for our going off to sea; for we filled
all our water-casks, and got some fish for our present use, to spare as
much as possible our ship's stores.
William, in the meantime, went away to the north, and made the land
about the Cape de St Thomas; and betwixt that and the isles De Tuberon
he found means to trade with the planters for all his negroes, as well
the women as the men, and at a very good price too; for William, who
spoke Portuguese pretty well, told them a fair story enough, that the
ship was in scarcity of provisions, that they were driven a great way
out of their way, and indeed, as we say, out of their knowledge, and
that they must go up to the northward as far as Jamaica, or sell there
upon the coast. This was a very plausible tale, and was easily believed;
and, if you observe the manner of the negroes' sailing, and what
happened in their voyage, was every word of it true.
By this method, and being true to one another, William passed for what
he was--I mean, for a very honest fellow; and by the assistance of one
planter, who sent to some of his neighbour planters, and managed the
trade among themselves, he got a quick market; for in less than five
weeks William sold all his negroes, and at last sold the ship itself,
and shipped himself and his twenty men, with two negro boys whom he had
left, in a sloop, one of those which the planters used to send on board
for the negroes. With this sloop Captain William, as we then called him,
came away, and found us at Port St Pedro, in the latitude of 32 degrees
30 minutes south.
Nothing was more surprising to us than to see a sloop come along the
coast, carrying Portuguese colours, and come in directly to us, after we
were assured he had discovered both our ships. We fired a gun, upon her
nearer approach, to bring her to an anchor, but immediately she fired
five guns by way of salute, and spread her English ancient. Then we
began to guess it was friend William, but wondered what was the meaning
of his being in a sloop, whereas we sent him away in a ship of near 300
tons; but he soon let us into the whole history of his management, with
which we had a great deal of reason to be very well satisfied. As soon
as he had brought the sloop to an anchor, he came aboard of my ship,
and there he gave us an account how he began to trade by the help of a
Portuguese planter, who lived near the seaside; how he went on shore and
went up to the first house he could see, and asked the man of the house
to sell him some hogs, pretending at first he only stood in upon the
coast to take in fresh water and buy some provisions; and the man not
only sold him seven fat hogs, but invited him in, and gave him, and five
men he had with him, a very good dinner; and he invited the planter on
board his ship, and, in return for his kindness, gave him a negro girl
for his wife.
This so obliged the planter that the next morning he sent him on board,
in a great luggage-boat, a cow and two sheep, with a chest of sweetmeats
and some sugar, and a great bag of tobacco, and invited Captain William
on shore again; that, after this, they grew from one kindness to
another; that they began to talk about trading for some negroes; and
William, pretending it was to do him service, consented to sell him
thirty negroes for his private use in his plantation, for which he gave
William ready money in gold, at the rate of five-and-thirty moidores per
head; but the planter was obliged to use great caution in the bringing
them on shore; for which purpose he made William weigh and stand out
to sea, and put in again, about fifty miles farther north, where at a
little creek he took the negroes on shore at another plantation, being a
friend's of his, whom, it seems, he could trust.
This remove brought William into a further intimacy, not only with the
first planter, but also with his friends, who desired to have some of
the negroes also; so that, from one to another, they bought so many,
till one overgrown planter took 100 negroes, which was all William
had left, and sharing them with another planter, that other planter
chaffered with William for ship and all, giving him in exchange a very
clean, large, well-built sloop of near sixty tons, very well furnished,
carrying six guns; but we made her afterwards carry twelve guns. William
had 300 moidores of gold, besides the sloop, in payment for the ship;
and with this money he stored the sloop as full as she could hold with
provisions, especially bread, some pork, and about sixty hogs alive;
among the rest, William got eighty barrels of good gunpowder, which
was very much for our purpose; and all the provisions which were in the
French ship he took out also.
This was a very agreeable account to us, especially when we saw that
William had received in gold coined, or by weight, and some Spanish
silver, 60,000 pieces of eight, besides a new sloop, and a vast quantity
of provisions.
We were very glad of the sloop in particular, and began to consult what
we should do, whether we had not best turn off our great Portuguese
ship, and stick to our first ship and the sloop, seeing we had scarce
men enough for all three, and that the biggest ship was thought too
big for our business. However, another dispute, which was now decided,
brought the first to a conclusion. The first dispute was, whither we
should go. My comrade, as I called him now, that is to say, he that was
my captain before we took this Portuguese man-of-war, was for going to
the South Seas, and coasting up the west side of America, where we could
not fail of making several good prizes upon the Spaniards; and that
then, if occasion required it, we might come home by the South Seas to
the East Indies, and so go round the globe, as others had done before
us.
But my head lay another way. I had been in the East Indies, and had
entertained a notion ever since that, if we went thither, we could not
fail of making good work of it, and that we might have a safe retreat,
and good beef to victual our ship, among my old friends the natives of
Zanzibar, on the coast of Mozambique, or the island of St Lawrence. I
say, my thoughts lay this way; and I read so many lectures to them all
of the advantages they would certainly make of their strength by the
prizes they would take in the Gulf of Mocha, or the Red Sea, and on the
coast of Malabar, or the Bay of Bengal, that I amazed them.
With these arguments I prevailed on them, and we all resolved to
steer away S.E. for the Cape of Good Hope; and, in consequence of this
resolution, we concluded to keep the sloop, and sail with all three, not
doubting, as I assured them, but we should find men there to make up
the number wanting, and if not, we might cast any of them off when we
pleased.
We could do no less than make our friend William captain of the sloop
which, with such good management, he had brought us. He told us, though
with much good manners, he would not command her as a frigate; but, if
we would give her to him for his share of the Guinea ship, which we
came very honestly by, he would keep us company as a victualler, if
we commanded him, as long as he was under the same force that took him
away.
We understood him, so gave him the sloop, but upon condition that
he should not go from us, and should be entirely under our command.
However, William was not so easy as before; and, indeed, as we
afterwards wanted the sloop to cruise for purchase, and a right
thorough-paced pirate in her, so I was in such pain for William that I
could not be without him, for he was my privy counsellor and companion
upon all occasions; so I put a Scotsman, a bold, enterprising, gallant
fellow, into her, named Gordon, and made her carry twelve guns and four
petereroes, though, indeed, we wanted men, for we were none of us manned
in proportion to our force.
We sailed away for the Cape of Good Hope the beginning of October 1706,
and passed by, in sight of the Cape, the 12th of November following,
having met with a great deal of bad weather. We saw several
merchant-ships in the roads there, as well English as Dutch, whether
outward bound or homeward we could not tell; be it what it would, we did
not think fit to come to an anchor, not knowing what they might be,
or what they might attempt against us, when they knew what we were.
However, as we wanted fresh water, we sent the two boats belonging to
the Portuguese man-of-war, with all Portuguese seamen or negroes in
them, to the watering-place, to take in water; and in the meantime we
hung out a Portuguese ancient at sea, and lay by all that night. They
knew not what we were, but it seems we passed for anything but really
what we was.
Our boats returning the third time loaden, about five o'clock next
morning, we thought ourselves sufficiently watered, and stood away
to the eastward; but, before our men returned the last time, the wind
blowing an easy gale at west, we perceived a boat in the grey of the
morning under sail, crowding to come up with us, as if they were afraid
we should be gone. We soon found it was an English long-boat, and that
it was pretty full of men. We could not imagine what the meaning of it
should be; but, as it was but a boat, we thought there could be no great
harm in it to let them come on board; and if it appeared they came
only to inquire who we were, we would give them a full account of our
business, by taking them along with us, seeing we wanted men as much as
anything. But they saved us the labour of being in doubt how to dispose
of them; for it seems our Portuguese seamen, who went for water, had
not been so silent at the watering-places as we thought they would have
been. But the case, in short, was this: Captain ---- (I forbear his
name at present, for a particular reason), captain of an East India
merchant-ship, bound afterwards for China, had found some reason to be
very severe with his men, and had handled some of them very roughly at
St Helena; insomuch, that they threatened among themselves to leave the
ship the first opportunity, and had long wished for that opportunity.
Some of these men, it seems, had met with our boat at the
watering-place, and inquiring of one another who we were, and upon what
account, whether the Portuguese seamen, by faltering in their account,
made them suspect that we were out upon the cruise, or whether they
told it in plain English or no (for they all spoke English enough to
be understood), but so it was, that as soon as ever the men carried the
news on board, that the ships which lay by to the eastward were English,
and that they were going upon the _account_, which, by they way, was a
sea term for a pirate; I say, as soon as ever they heard it, they went
to work, and getting all things ready in the night, their chests and
clothes, and whatever else they could, they came away before it was day,
and came up with us about seven o'clock.
When they came by the ship's side which I commanded we hailed them
in the usual manner, to know what and who they were, and what their
business. They answered they were Englishmen, and desired to come on
board. We told them they might lay the ship on board, but ordered they
should let only one man enter the ship till the captain knew their
business, and that he should come without any arms. They said, Ay, with
all their hearts.