I would permit him to speak with me in private; I was not at first very free to it, but he having consented to let the mate and Captain Merlotte be present, I yielded.
When all the rest were withdrawn, he told me, that having been five years in the pirates' service, as he might call it, and being obliged to do as they did, I might be sure he had some small share in the purchase; and however he had come into it against his will, yet, as he had been obliged to go with them, he had made some advantage; and that, being resolved to leave them, he had a good while ago packed up some of the best of what he had got, to make his escape, and begged I would let him deposit it with me as a security for his fidelity.
Upon this he ordered a chest to be taken out of the shallop, and brought into my great cabin; and, besides this, gave me out of his pocket, a bag, sealed up, the contents of which I shall speak of hereafter.
The shallop returned the next day, and I sent back the mate with my long-boat and twenty-four men, to go and take possession of the ship; and appointed my carpenter to go and see to the repairs that were necessary to be done to her: and some days after, I sent Captain Merlotte with the supercargo, in our sloop, to go and secure the possession, and to cover the retreat of any of the men who might have a mind to come away, and might be opposed by the rest; and this was done at the request of the gunner who foresaw there might be some debate about it.
They spent six weeks and some odd days in fitting out this ship, occasioned by the want of a convenient place to lay her on shore in, which they were obliged to make with a great deal of labour; however, she was at last completely fitted up.
When she was equipped, they laid in a good store of provisions, though not so well cured as to last a great while. One of the best things we got a recruit of here was casks, which, as said before, we greatly wanted, and which their coopers assisted us to trim, season, and fit up.
As to bread, we had no help from them; for they had none but what they made of rice, and they had not sufficient store of that.
But we had more to do yet: for, when the ship was fitted up, and our men had the possession of her, they were surprised one morning, on a sudden, with a most horrible tumult among the pirates: and had not our brigantine been at hand to secure the possession, I believe they had taken the ship from our men again, and perhaps have come down with her and their two sloops, and have attacked us. The case was this:
The gunner, who was a punctual fellow to his word, resolved that none of the men should go in the ship but such as he had singled out; and they were such as were generally taken out of merchant ships by force: but when he came to talk to the men of who should go, and who should stay, truly they would all go, to a man, there was not a man of them would stay behind; and, in a word, they fell out about it to that degree that they came to blows, and the gunner was forced to fly for it, with about twenty-two men that stood to him, and six or seven were wounded in the fray, whereof two died.
The gunner being thus driven to his shifts, made down to the shore to his boat, but the rogues were too nimble for him, and had got to his boat before him, and prepared to man her and two more, to go on board and secure the ship.
In this distress, the gunner, who had taken sanctuary in the woods at about a mile distance, but unhappily above the camp, so that the platform of guns was between him and the ship, had no remedy but to send one of his men, who swam very well, to take a compass round behind the pirates' camp and come to the water-side below the camp and platform, so to take the water and swim on board the ship, which lay near a league below their said camp, and give our men notice of what had happened; to warn them to suffer none of their men to come on board, unless the gunner was with them; and if possible, to send a boat on shore to fetch off the gunner and his men, who were following by the same way, and would be at the same place, and make a signal to them to come for him.
Our men had scarce received this notice, when they saw a boat full of men put off from the platform, and row down under shore towards them: but as they resolved not to suffer them to come on board, they called to them by a speaking-trumpet, and told them they might go back again, for they should not come on board, nor any other boat, unless the gunner was on board.
They rowed on for all that, when our men called to them again, and told them, if they offered to put off, in order to come on board, or, in short, to row down shore any farther than a little point which our men named, and which was just ahead of them, they would fire at them. They rowed on for all this, and even till they were past the point; which, our men seeing, they immediately let fly a shot, but fired a little ahead of them, so as not to hit the boat, and this brought them to a stop; so they lay upon their oars awhile, as if they were considering what to do, when our men perceived two boats more come off from the platform, likewise full of men, and rowing after the first.
Upon this, they called again to the first boat with their speaking-trumpet, and told them, if they did not all go immediately on shore, they would sink the boat. They had no remedy, seeing our men resolved, and that they lay open to the shot of the ship; so they went on shore accordingly, and then our men fired at the empty boat, till they split her in pieces, and made her useless to them.
Upon this firing, our brigantine, which lay about two leagues off in the mouth of a little creek, on the south of that river, weighed immediately, and stood away to the opening of the road where the ship lay; and the tide of flood being still running in, they drove up towards the ship, for her assistance, and came to an anchor about a cable's length ahead of her, but within pistol-shot of the shore; at the same time sending two-and-thirty of her men on board the great ship, to reinforce the men on board, who were but sixteen in number.
Just at this time, the gunner and his twenty-one men, who heard the firing, and had quickened their pace, though they had a great compass to fetch through woods and untrod paths, and some luggage to carry too, were come to the shore, and made the signal, which our men in the ship observing, gave notice to the officer of the brigantine to fetch them on board, which he did very safely. By the way, as the officer afterwards told us, most of their luggage consisted in money, with which, it seems, every man of them was very well furnished, having shared their wealth at their first coming on shore: as for clothes, they had very few, and those all in rags; and as for linen, they had scarce a shirt among them all, or linen enough to have made a white flag for a truce, if they had occasion for it: in short, a crew so rich and so ragged, were hardly ever seen before.
The ship was now pretty well manned: for the brigantine carried the gunner and his twenty-one men on board her; and the tide by this time being spent, she immediately unmoored, and loosed her topsails, which, as it happened, had been bent to the yards two days before; so with the first of the ebb she weighed, and fell down about a league farther, by which she was quite out of reach of the platform, and rid in the open sea; and the brigantine did the same.
But by this means, they missed the occasion of the rest of the gunner's men, who, having got together to the number of between seventy and eighty, had followed him, and come down to the shore, and made the signals, but were not understood by our ship, which put the poor men to great difficulties; for they had broken away from the rest by force, and had been pursued half a mile by the whole body, particularly at the entrance into a very thick woody place, and were so hard put to it, that they were obliged to make a desperate stand, and fire at their old friends, which had exasperated them to the last degree. But, as the case of these men was desperate, they took an effectual method for their own security, of which I shall give a farther account presently.
The general body of the pirates were now up in arms, and the new ship was, as it were, in open war with them, or at least they had declared war against her: but as they had been disappointed in their attempt to force her, and found they were not strong enough at sea to attack her, they sent a flag of truce on board. Our men admitted them to come to the ship's side; but as my mate, who now had the command, knew them to be a gang of desperate rogues, that would attempt anything, though ever so
