style="font-size:15px;"> 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 affront, and threatened to make prize of their barks, and slaves of the men; upon which they grew very humble; and one of them, a Malabar Indian, who spoke a little English, spoke for them, that they would willingly trade with us for such goods as we had; whereupon I produced three bales of English cloth, which I showed them, and said they would be of good merchandise at Gombaroon in the Gulf, for that the Persians made their long vests of such cloths.
In short, for this cloth, and some money, we bought a box of choice pearls, which the chief of them had picked out from the rest for the Portuguese merchants at Goa; and which, when I came to London, was valued at two thousand two hundred pounds sterling.
We were near two months on our voyage from Madagascar to the coast of India, and from thence to Ceylon, where we put in on the south-west part of the island, to see what provisions we could get, and to take in a large supply of water.
The people here we found willing to supply us with provisions; but withal so sharp, imposing upon us their own rates for everything, and withal, so false, that we were often provoked to treat them very rudely. However, I gave strict orders that they should not be hurt upon any occasion, at least till we had filled all our water-casks and taken in what fresh provisions we could get, and especially rice, which we valued very much. But they provoked us at last beyond all patience; for they were such thieves when they were on board, and such treacherous rogues when we were on shore, that there was no bearing with them; and two accidents fell out upon this occasion which fully broke the peace between us; one was on board, and the other on shore, and both happened the same day.
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