I.

Although the account of the serious engagement betwixt the _Cassandra_

and the two pirate vessels in the Mozambique Channel hath already been

set to print, the publick have yet to know many lesser and more detailed

circumstances concerning the matter;[A] and as the above-mentioned

account hath caused much remark and comment, I shall take it upon me to

give many incidents not yet known, seeking to render them neither in

refined rhetorick nor with romantick circumstances such as are sometimes

used by novel and story writers to catch the popular attention, but

telling this history as directly, and with as little verbosity and

circumlocution, as possible.

[A] A brief narration of the naval engagement between Captain Mackra and

the two pirate vessels was given in the Captain's official report made

at Bombay. It appears in the life of the pirate England in Johnson's

book: "A Genuine Account of the Voyages and Plunders of the Most

Notorious Pyrates, &c." London, 1742.

For the conveniency of the reader, I shall render this true and

veracious account under sundry headings, marked I., II., III., &c., as

seen above, which may assist him in separating the less from the more

notable portions of the narrative.

* * * * *

According to my log--a diary or journal of circumstances appertaining to

shipboard--it was the nineteenth day of April, 1720, when, I being in

command of the East India Company's ship _Cassandra_, billed for Bombay

and waiting for orders to sail, comes Mr. Evans, the Company's agent,

aboard with certain sealed and important orders which he desired to

deliver to me at the last minute.

After we had come to my cabin and were set down, Mr. Evans hands me two

pacquets, one addressed to myself, the other superscribed to one

Benjamin Longways.

He then proceeded to inform me that the Company had a matter of

exceeding import and delicacy which they had no mind to intrust to any

one but such, he was pleased to say, as was a tried and worthy servant,

and that they had fixed upon me as the fitting one to undertake the

commission, which was of such a nature as would involve the transfer of

many thousand pounds. He furthermore informed me that a year or two

before, the Company had rendered certain aid to the native King of

Juanna, an island lying between Madagascar and the east coast of Africa,

at a time when there was war betwixt him and the king of an island

called Mohilla, which lyeth coadjacent to the other country; that I

should make Juanna upon my voyage, and that I should there receive

through Mr. Longways, who was the Company's agent at that place, a

pacquet of the greatest import, relating to the settlement of certain

matters betwixt the East India Company and the king of that island.

Concluding his discourse, he further said that he had no hesitation in

telling me that the pacquet which I would there receive from Mr. Longways

concerned certain payments due the East India Company, and would, as he

had said before, involve the transfer of many thousand pounds; from

which I might see what need there was of great caution and

circumspection in the transaction.

"But, sir," says I, "sure the Company is making a prodigious mistake in

confiding a business of such vast importance as this to one so young and

so inexperienced as I."

To this Mr. Evans only laughed, and was pleased to say that it was no

concern of his, but from what he had observed he thought the honorable

Company had made a good choice, and that of a keen tool, in my case. He

furthermore said that in the pacquet which he had given to me, and which

was addressed to me, I would find such detailed instructions as would be

necessary, and that the other should be handed to Mr. Longways, and was

an order for the transfer above spoken of.

Soon after this he left the ship, and was rowed ashore, after many kind

and complacent wishes for a quick and prosperous voyage.

It may be as well to observe here as elsewhere within this narrative

that the Company's written orders to me contained little that Mr. Evans

had not told me, saving only certain details, and the further order that

that which the agent at Juanna should transfer to me should be delivered

to the Governor at Bombay, and that I should receive a written receipt

from him for the same. Neither at that time did I know the nature of the

trust that I was called upon to execute, save that it was of great

import, and that it involved money to some mightily considerable amount.

The crew of the _Cassandra_ consisted of fifty-one souls all told,

officers and ordinary seamen. Besides these were six passengers, the

list of whom I give below, it having been copied from my log-book

journal:

Captain Edward Leach (of the East India Company's service).

Mr. Thomas Fellows (who was to take the newly established agency of the

Company at Cuttapore).

Mr. John Williamson (a young cadet).

Mrs. Colonel Evans (a sister-in-law of the Company's agent spoken of

above).

Mistress Pamela Boon (a niece of the Governor at Bombay).

Mistress Ann Hastings (the young lady's waiting-woman).

Of Mistress Pamela Boon I feel extreme delicacy in speaking, not caring

to make publick matters of such a nature as our subsequent relations to

one another. Yet this much I may say without indelicacy, that she was at

that time a young lady of eighteen years of age, and that her father,

who had been a clergyman, having died the year before, she was at that

time upon her way to India to join her uncle, who, as said above, was

Governor at Bombay, and had been left her guardian.

Nor will it be necessary to tire the reader by any disquisition upon the

other passengers, excepting Captain Leach, whom I shall have good cause

to remember to the very last day of my life.

He was a tall, handsome fellow, of about eight-and-twenty years of age,

of good natural parts, and of an old and honorable family of

Hertfordshire. He was always exceedingly kind and pleasant to me, and

treated me upon every occasion with the utmost complacency, and yet I

conceived a most excessive dislike for his person from the very first

time that I beheld him, nor, as events afterwards proved, were my

instincts astray, or did they mislead me in my sentiments, as they are

so apt to do upon similar occasions.

After a voyage somewhat longer than usual, and having stopped at St.

Helena, which hath of late been one of our stations, we sighted the

southern coast of Madagascar about the middle of July, and on the

eighteenth dropped anchor in a little bay on the eastern side of the

island of Juanna, not being able to enter into the harbor which lyeth

before the king's town because of the shallowness of the water and the

lack of a safe anchorage, which is mightily necessary along such a

treacherous and dangerous coast. In the same harbor we found two other

vessels--one the _Greenwich_, Captain Kirby, an English ship; the other

an Ostender, a great, clumsy, tub-shaped craft.

I was much put about that I could get no nearer to the king's town than

I then was, it being some seven or eight leagues away around the

northern end of the island. I was the more vexed that we could not well

come to it in boats, other than by a long reach around the cape to the

northward, which would increase the journey to wellnigh thirty miles.

Besides all this, I was further troubled upon learning from Captain

Kirby of the _Greenwich_ that the pirates had been very troublesome in

these waters for some time past. He said that having been ashore soon

after he had come to that place, in search of a convenient spot to take

in water, he had found fourteen pirates that had come in their canoes

from the Mayotta, where the pirate ship to which they belonged, viz.,

the _Indian Queen_, two hundred and fifty tons, twenty-eight guns, and

ninety men, commanded by Captain Oliver de la Bouche, bound from the

Guinea coast to the East Indies, had been bulged and lost.

I asked Captain Kirby what he had done with the rogues. He told me,

nothing at all, and that the less one had to do with such fellows the

better. At this I was vastly surprised, and that he had taken no steps

to put an end to such a nest of vile, wicked, and bloody-minded wretches

when he had it so clearly in his power to take fourteen of them at once;

more especially as he should have known that if they got away from that

place and to any of their companions they would bring the others not

only about his ears, but of every other craft that might be lying in the

harbor at the time. Something to this effect I said, whereat he flew

into a mighty huff, and said that if I had seen half the experience that

he had been through I would not be so free in my threats of doing this

or that to a set of wretches no better than so many devils from hell,

who would cut a man's throat without any scruples either of fear or

remorse.

To all this I made no rejoinder, for the pirates were far enough away by

this time, and I was willing to suppose that Captain Kirby had done

what he judged to be best in the matter. Yet the getting away of those

evil wretches brought more trouble upon me than had happened in all my

life before.

But, as was said before, I was in a pretty tub of pickle with all those

things; for I could not bring my ship to anchor in any reasonable

distance of the king's town, nor could I leave her and go on such a

journey as would take a day or more, lest the pirates should come along

in my absence. Neither did I like to send any of the officers under me

to execute the commission, it being one of such exceeding delicacy and

secrecy. At this juncture, and all of my passengers knowing that we

could not leave that place till I had communicated certain papers to the

Company's agent at the king's town, comes Captain Leach to me and

volunteers to deliver the pacquet addressed to Mr. Longways. At first I

was but little inclined to accept of his complacency, but having a

secret feeling that I might be wronging him by my prejudice against him,

I determined to give second thought to the matter before I hastily

declined his offer of aid. Indeed, I may truthfully say I would have

felt more inclined to refuse his assistance if I had entertained a more

high opinion of his person. As it was, I could see no reason for not

accepting his offer; he was regarded everywhere as a man of rectitude

and of honor, and I had no real grounds to impeach this opinion; so the

end of the business was that I accepted his aid with the best face that

I was able to command, though that was with no very good grace, and gave

him leave to choose ten volunteers as a boat's crew for the

expedition.