 Section 13 of Captain Singleton. The Life Adventures and Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton by Daniel Defoe Well, notwithstanding this, we ventured. Or to men that had passed such wild places as we had done, nothing could seem too desperate to undertake. We ventured, I say, and the rather because we saw very high mountains in our way at a great distance, and we imagined wherever there were mountains there would be springs and rivers, where rivers there would be trees and grass, where trees and grass there would be cattle, and where cattle some kind of inhabitants. At last, in consequence of this speculative philosophy, we entered this waste, having a great heap of roots and plants for our bread, such as the Indians gave us, a very little flesh or salt, and but a little water. We traveled two days towards those hills, and still they seemed as far off as they did at first, and it was the fifth day before we got to them. Indeed, we traveled but softly, for it was excessively hot, and we were much about the very equinoxial line. We hardly knew whether to the south or the north of it. As we had concluded that where there were hills there would be springs, so it happened, but we were not only surprised but really frightened to find the first spring we came to, and which looked admirably clear and beautiful, to be as salt as brine. It was a terrible disappointment to us, and put us under melancholy apprehensions at first, but the gunner, who was of a spirit never discouraged, told us we should not be disturbed at that, but be very thankful. For salt was a bait we stood in as much need of as anything, and there was no question, but we should find fresh water as well as salt. And here our surgeon stepped in to encourage us, and told us that if we did not know, he would show us a way how to make that salt water fresh, which indeed made us all more cheerful, though we wondered what he meant. meantime our men, without bidding, had been seeking about for other springs and found several, but still they were all salt. From once we concluded that there was a salt rock or mineral stone in those mountains, and perhaps they might be all of such a substance. But still I wondered by what witchcraft it was that our artist, the surgeon, would make this salt water turn fresh, and I longed to see the experiment, which was indeed a very odd one, but he went to work with as much assurance as if he had tried it on the very spot before. He took two of our large mats and sewed them together, and they made a kind of a bag four feet broad, three feet and a half high, and about a foot and a half thick when it was full. He caused us to fill this bag with dry sand, and tread it down as close as we could not to burst the mats. When thus the bag was full within a foot, he sought some other earth and filled up the rest with it, and still trod all in as hard as he could. When he had done, he made a hole in the upper earth about as broad as the crown of a large hat or something bigger about, but not so deep, and made a negro fill it with water, and still as it shrunk away to fill it again, and keep it full. The bag he had placed at first across two pieces of wood about a foot from the ground, and under it he ordered some of our skins to be spread that would hold water. In about an hour, and not sooner, the water began to come dropping through the bottom of the bag, and to our great surprise was perfectly fresh and sweet, and this continued for several hours, but in the end the water began to be a little brackish. When we told him that, well then, said he, turn the sand out and fill it again. Whether he did this by way of experiment from his own fancy, or whether he had seen it done before, I do not remember. The next day we mounted the tops of the hills, where the prospect was indeed astonishing, for as far as the eye could look, south or west or northwest, there was nothing to be seen but a vast howling wilderness with neither tree nor river nor any green thing. The surface we found, as the part we passed the day before, had a kind of thick moss upon it of a blackish dead color, but nothing in it that looked like food, either for man or beast. Had we been stored with provisions to have entered for ten or twenty days upon this wilderness, as we were formerly, and with fresh water, we had hearts good enough to have ventured, though we had been obliged to come back again, for if we went north we did not know, but we might meet with the same, but we neither had provisions, neither were we in any place where it was possible to get them. We killed some wild faring creatures at the foot of these hills, but except two things, like to nothing that we ever saw before, we met with nothing that was fit to eat. These were creatures that seemed to be between the kind of a buffalo and a deer, but indeed resembled neither, for they had no horns and had great legs like a cow, with a fine head and the neck like a deer. We killed also at several times a tiger, two young lions and a wolf, but God be thanked, we were not so reduced as to eat carrion. Upon this terrible prospect I renewed my motion of turning northward and making towards the river Niger or Rio Grande, then to turn west towards the English settlements on the Gold Coast, to which everyone most readily consented, only our gunner who was indeed our best guide, though he happened to be mistaken at this time. He moved that as our coast was now northward, so we might slant away northwest, that so by crossing the country we might perhaps meet with some other river that run into the Rio Grande northward or down to the Gold Coast southward, and so both direct our way and shorten the labor, as also because if any of the country was inhabited and fruitful we should probably find it upon the shore of the rivers, where alone we could be furnished with provisions. This was good advice and too rational not to be taken, but our present business was what to do to get out of this dreadful place we were in. Behind us was a waste, which had already cost us five days' march, and we had not provisions for five days left to go back again the same way. Before us was nothing but horror as above. So we resolved, seeing the ridge of the hills we were upon, had some appearance of fruitfulness and that they seemed to lead away to the northward, a great way, to keep under the foot of them on the east side to go on as far as we could, and in the meantime to look diligently out for food. Accordingly we moved on the next morning, for we had no time to lose, and to our great comfort we came in our first morning's march to very good springs of fresh water. Unless we should have a scarcity, again we filled all our bladder bottles and carried it with us. I should also have observed that our surgeon, who made the salt water fresh, took the opportunity of those salt springs and made us the quantity of three or four pecs of very good salt. In our third march we found an unexpected supply of food, the hills being full of hares. They were of a kind something different from ours in England, larger and not as swift a foot, but very good meat. We shot several of them, and the little tame leopard, which I told you we took at the negro town that we plundered, hunted them like a dog, and killed us several every day. But she would eat nothing of them, unless we gave it her. Which indeed, in our circumstance, was very obliging. We salted them a little, and dried them in the sun whole, and carried a strange parcel along with us. I think it was almost three hundred, for we did not know when we might find any more either of these or any other food. We continued our course under these hills very comfortably for eight or nine days, when we found to our great satisfaction the country beyond us began to look with something of a better countenance. As for the west side of the hills, we never examined it till this day, when three of our company, the rest halting for refreshment, mounted the hills again to satisfy their curiosity. But found it all the same, nor could they see any end of it, no, not to the north the way we were going. So the tenth day, finding the hill made a turn, and led, as it were, into the vast desert, we left them, and continued our course north, the country being very tolerably full of woods, some waste, but not tediously long, till we came by our gunners observation into the latitude of eight degrees five minutes, which we were nineteen days more in performing. All this way we found no inhabitants, but abundance of wild ravenous creatures with which we became so well acquainted now that really we did not much mind them. We saw lions and tigers and leopards every night and morning in abundance, but as they seldom came near us, we let them go about their business. If they offered to come near us, we made false fire with any gun that was uncharged, and they would walk off as soon as they saw the flash. We made pretty good shift for food all this way, for sometimes we killed hares, sometimes some fouls, but for my life I cannot give names to any of them except a kind of partridge, and another that was like our turtle. Now and then we began to meet the elephants, again in great numbers, those creatures delighted chiefly in the woody part of the country. This long continued march fatigued us very much, and two of our men fell sick indeed, so very sick that we thought they would have died, and one of our negroes died suddenly. Our surgeon said it was an apoplexy, but he wondered at it, he said, for he could never complain of his high feeding. Another of them was very ill, but our surgeon, with much adieu persuading him, indeed it was almost forcing him to let blood, he recovered. We halted here twelve days for the sake of our sick men, and our surgeon persuaded me, and three or four more of us, to be let blood during the time of rest, which, with other things he gave us, contributed very much to our continued health in so tedious a march, and in so hot a climate. In this march we pitched our matted tents every night, and they were very comfortable to us, so we had woods and trees to shelter us in most places. We thought it very strange that in all this part of the country we yet met with no inhabitants, but the principal reason, as we found afterwards, was that we, having kept a western course first, and then a northern course, were gotten too much into the middle of the country and among the deserts, whereas the inhabitants are principally found among the rivers, lakes, and lowlands, as well to the southwest as to the north. What little rivulets we found here were so empty of water that except some pits, and little more than ordinary pools, there was scarcely any water to be seen in them. And they rather showed that during the rainy months they had a channel than that they had really running water in them at that time, by which it was easy for us to judge that we had a great way to go. But this was no discouragement so long as we had but provisions and some seasonable shelter from the violent heat, which indeed I thought was much greater now than when the sun was just over our heads. Our men, being recovered, we set forward again, very well stored with provisions and water sufficient, and bending our course a little to the westward of the north, traveled in hopes of some favorable stream, which might bear a canoe. But we found none till after twenty days' travel, including eight days' rest. For our men, being weak, we rested very often, especially when we came to places which were proper for our purpose, where we found cattle, fowl, or anything to kill for our food. In those twenty days' march we advanced four degrees to the northward, besides some meridian distance westward, and we met with abundance of elephants, and with a good number of elephants' teeth scattered up and down, here and there, in the woody grounds especially, some of which were very large. But they were no booty to us. Our business was provisions and a good passage out of the country, and it had been much more to our purpose to have found a good fat deer and to have killed it for food than a hundred ton of elephants' teeth. And yet, as you shall presently hear, when we came to begin our passage by water, we once thought to have built a large canoe on purpose to have loaded it with ivory. But this was when we knew nothing of the rivers, nor knew anything how dangerous and how difficult a passage it was we were likely to have in them, nor had considered the weight of carriage to lug them to the rivers where we might embark. At the end of twenty days' travel, as above, in the latitude of three degrees sixteen minutes, we discovered in a valley at some distance from us a pretty towerable stream which we thought deserved the name of a river and which ran its course north-northwest, which was just what we wanted. As we had fixed our thoughts upon our passage by water, we took this for the place to make the experiment and bent our march directly to the valley. There was a small thicket of trees just in our way, which we went by, thinking no harm, when, on a sudden, one of our negroes was dangerously wounded with an arrow shot into his back, slanting between his shoulders. This put us to a full stop. And three of our men, with two negroes, spreading the wood, for it was but a small one, found a negro with a bow, but no arrow who would have escaped. But our men that discovered him shot him in revenge of the mischief he had done. So we lost the opportunity of taking him prisoner, which, if we had done and sent him home with good usage, it might have brought others to us in a friendly manner. Going a little farther, we came to five negro huts or houses built after a different manner from any we had seen yet. And at the door of one of them lay seven elephants' teeth piled up against the wall or side of the hut, as if they had been provided against a market. Here were no men, but seven or eight women and near twenty children. We offered them no in civility of any kind, but gave them everyone a bit of silver beaten up thin, as I observed before, and cut diamond fashion, or in the shape of a bird, at which the women were overjoyed and brought out to us several sorts of food, which we did not understand, being cakes of a meal made of roots, which they bake in the sun and which ate very well. We went a little way farther and pitched our camp for that night, not doubting, but our stability to the women would produce some good effect when their husbands might come home. Accordingly, the next morning, the women with eleven men, five young boys, and two good big girls came to our camp. Before they came quite to us, the women called aloud and made an odd screaming noise to bring us out. And accordingly, we came out, when two of the women, showing us what we had given them and pointing to the company behind, made such signs as we could easily understand signified friendship. When the men advanced, having bows and arrows, they laid them down on the ground, scraped and threw sand over their heads, and turned around three times with their hands, laid up upon the tops of their heads. This, it seems, was a solemn vow of friendship. Upon this, we beckoned them with our hands to come nearer. Then they sent the boys and girls to us first, which, it seems, was to bring us more cakes of bread and some green herbs to eat, which we received, and took the boys up and kissed them and the little girls too. Then the men came up close to us and sat them down on the ground, making signs that we should sit down by them, which we did. They said much to one another, but we could not understand them, nor could we find any way to make them understand us, much less wither we were going, or what we wanted, only that we easily made them understand we wanted victuals, whereupon one of the men, casting his eyes about him towards a rising ground that was about a half mile off, started up as if he was frighted, flew to the place where they had laid down their bows and arrows and snatched up a bow and two arrows and ran like a racehorse to the place. When he came there, he let fly both his arrows and comes back again to us with the same speed. We, seeing he came with the bow, but without the arrows, were the more inquisitive, but the fellow, saying nothing to us, beckons to one of our negroes to come to him and we bid him so. So he let him back to the place, where lay a kind of deer, shot with two arrows, but not quite dead and between them they brought it down to us. This was for a gift to us and was very welcome, I assure you, for our stock was low. These people were all stark naked. The next day there came about a hundred men to us and women making the same awkward signals of friendship and dancing and showing themselves very well pleased and anything they had, they gave us. How the man in the wood came to be so butchery and rude as to shoot at our men without making any breach first, we could not imagine, for the people were simple, plain and inoffensive in all our other conversation with them. From hence we went down the banks of the little river I mentioned and where I found we should see the whole nation of negroes but whether friendly to us or not, that we could make no judgment of yet. The river was no use to us as to the design of making canoes, a great while. We traversed the country on the edge of it about five days more. When our carpenters, finding the stream, increased, proposed to pitch our tents and fall to work to make canoes. But after we had begun the work and cut down two or three trees and spent five days in the labor, some of our men wandering further down the river brought us word that the stream rather decreased than increased, sinking away into the sands or drying up by the heat of the sun so that the river appeared not able to carry the least canoe that could be any way useful to us. So we were obliged to give over our enterprise and move on. In our further prospect this way, we marched three full days west, the country on the north side being extraordinary mountainous and more parched and dry than any we had seen yet. Whereas in the part which looks due west, we found a pleasant valley running a great way between two great ridges and mountains. The hills looked frightful, being entirely bare of trees or grass and even white with the dryness of the sand. But in the valley we had trees, grass and some creatures that were fit for food and some inhabitants. We passed by some of their huts or houses and saw people about them. But they ran up into the hills as soon as they saw us. At the end of this valley we met with a people country and at first it put us to some doubt whether we should go among them or keep up towards the hills northerly and as our aim was principally as before to make our way to the river Niger, we inclined to the latter, pursuing our course by the compass to the northwest. We marched thus without interruption seven days more when we met with a surprising circumstance much more desolate and disconsolate than our own and which in time to come will scarce seem credible. End of section 13, read by Dennis Sayers in Modesto, California for LibriVox. Section 14 of Captain Singleton. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Read by Dennis Sayers. The life, adventures and piracies of the famous Captain Singleton by Daniel Defoe. We did not much seek the conversing or acquainting ourselves with the natives of the country except where we found the want of them for our provision or their direction for our way so that whereas we found the country here begin to be very populous, especially towards our left hand that is to the south, we kept at the more distance northerly still stretching towards the west. In this tract we found something or other to kill and eat which always supplied our necessity though not so well as we were provided in our first setting out. Being thus as it were pushing to avoid a peopled country we at last came to a very pleasant agreeable stream of water, not big enough to be called a river, but running to the north-northwest which was the very course we desired to go. On the farthest bank of this brook we perceived some huts of negroes, not many and in a little low spot of ground some maize or Indian corn growing which intimated presently to us that there were some inhabitants on that side less barbarous than what we had met with in other places where we had been. As we went forward our whole caravan being in a body, our negroes who were in the front cried out that they saw a white man. We were not much surprised at first it being as we thought a mistake of the fellows and asked them what they meant. When one of them stepped to me and pointing to a hut on the other side of the hill I was astonished to see a white man indeed but stark naked, very busy near the door of his hut and stooping down to the ground with something in his hand as if he had been at some work and his back being towards us he did not see us. I gave notice to our negroes to make no noise and waited till some more of our men were come up to show the sight to them that they might be sure I was not mistaken and we were soon satisfied of the truth for the man having heard some noise started up and looked full at us as much surprised to be sure as we were but whether with fear or hope we then knew not. As he discovered us so did the rest of the inhabitants belonging to the huts about him and all crowded together looking at us at a distance a little bottom in which the brook ran lying between us. The white man and all the rest as he told us afterwards not knowing well whether they should stay or run away. However it presently came into my thoughts that if there were white men among them it would be much easier to make them understand what we meant as to peace or war then we found it with others. So tying a piece of white rag to the end of a stick we sent two negroes with it to the bank of the water carrying the pole up as high as they could. It was presently understood and two of their men and the white man came to the shore on the other side. However as the white man spoke no Portuguese they could understand nothing of one another but by signs. But our men made the white man understand that they had white men with them too at which they said the white man laughed. However to be short our men came back and told us they were all good friends and in about an hour four of our men two negroes and the black prince went to the river side where the white man came to them. They had not been half a quarter of an hour but a negro came running to me and told me the white man was English as he called him. Upon which I ran back eagerly enough you may be sure with him and found as he said that he was an Englishman. Upon which he embraced me very passionately the tears running down his face. The first surprise of his seeing us was over before we came but anyone may conceive it by the brief account he gave us afterwards of his very unhappy circumstances and of so unexpected deliverance such as perhaps never happened to any man in the world. Therefore it was a million to one odds that ever he could have been relieved. Nothing but an adventure that never was heard or read of before could have suited his case unless heaven by some miracle that never was to be expected had acted for him. He appeared to be a gentleman not an ordinary bread fellow seamen or laboring man. This showed itself and his behavior in the first moment of our conversing with him and in spite of all the disadvantages of his miserable circumstances. He was a middle-aged man not above thirty-seven or thirty-eight though his beard was grown exceedingly long and the hair of his head and face strangely covered him to the middle of his back and breast. He was white and his skin very fine though discolored and in some places blistered and covered with a brown blackish substance scurvy, scaly and hard which was the effect of the scorching heat of the sun. He was stark naked and had been so as he told us upwards of two years. He was so exceedingly transported at our meeting with him that he could scarce enter into any discourse at all with us that day. And when he could get away from us for a little we saw him walking alone and showing all the most extravagant tokens of an ungovernable joy. And even afterwards he was never without tears in his eyes for several days upon the least word spoken by us of his circumstances or by him of his deliverance. We found his behavior the most courteous and endearing I ever saw in any man whatever and most evident tokens of a mannerally well-bred person appeared in all things he did or said and our people were exceedingly taken with him. He was a scholar and a mathematician. He could not speak Portuguese indeed but he spoke Latin to our surgeon French to another of our men and Italian to a third. He had no leisure in his thoughts to ask us once we came whether we were going or who we were but would have it always as an answer to himself that to be sure wherever we were going we came from heaven and were sent on purpose to save him from the most wretched condition that ever man was reduced to. Our men pitching their camp on the bank of a little river opposite to him he began to inquire what store of provisions we had and how we proposed to be supplied. When we found that our store was but small he said he would talk with the natives and we should have provisions enough for he said they were the most courteous, good-natured part of the inhabitants in all that part of the country as we might suppose by his living so safe among them. The first things this gentleman did for us were indeed of the greatest consequence for us. For first he perfectly informed us where we were and which was the properest course for us to steer. Secondly he put us in the way how to furnish ourselves effectually with provisions and thirdly he was our complete interpreter and peacemaker with all the natives who now began to be very numerous among us and who were a more fierce and politic people than those we had met with before not so easily terrified with our arms as those and not so ignorant as to give their provisions and corn for our little toys such as I said before our artificer made but as they had frequently traded and conversed with the Europeans on the coast or with other Negro nations that had traded and been concerned with them they were the less ignorant and the less fearful and consequently nothing was to be had from them but by exchange for such things as they liked. This I say of the Negro natives which we soon came among but as to these poor people that he lived among they were not much acquainted with things being at the distance of above 300 miles from the coast only that they found elephants teeth upon the hills to the north which they took and carried about sixty or seventy miles south where other trading Negroes usually met them and gave them beads glass shells and calories for them such as the English and Dutch and other traders furnished them with from Europe. We now began to be more familiar with our new acquaintance and first though we made but a sorry figure as to close ourselves having neither shoe or stocking or glove or a hat among us and but very few shirts yet as well as we could we clothed him and first our surgeon having scissors and razors shaved him and cut his hair a hat as I say we had not in all our stores but he supplied himself by making himself a cap of a piece of a leopard skin most artificially as for the shoes or stockings he had gone so long without them that he cared not even for the buskins and foot gloves we wore which I described above as he had been curious to hear the whole story of our travels and was exceedingly delighted with the relation so we were no less to know and pleased with the account of his circumstances and the history of his coming to that strange place alone and in that condition which we found him in as above this account of his would indeed be in itself the subject of an agreeable history and would be as long and diverting as our own having in it many strange and extraordinary incidents but we cannot have room here to launch out into so long a digression the sum of his history was this he had been a factor for the English Guine company at Sierra Leone or some other of their settlements which had been taken by the French where he had been plundered of all his own effects as well as of what was entrusted to him by the company whether it was that the company did not do him justice in restoring his circumstances or in further employing him he quitted their service and was employed by those called separate traders and being afterwards out of employ there also traded on his own account when passing unwarily into one of the company's settlements he was either betrayed into the hands of some of the natives or somehow or other was surprised by them however as they did not kill him he found means to escape from them at that time and fled to another nation of the natives who, being enemies to the other entertained him friendly and with them he lived some time but not liking his quarters or his company he fled again and several times changed his landlords sometimes was carried by force sometimes hurried by fear as circumstances altered with him the variety of which deserves a history by itself till at last he had wandered beyond all possibility of return and had taken up his abode where we found him where he was well received by the petty king of the tribe he lived with and he, in return instructed them how to value the product of their labor and on what terms to trade with those negroes who came up to them for teeth as he was naked and had no clothes so he was naked of arms for his defense having neither gun, sword, staff, or any instrument of war about him no, not to guard himself against the attacks of a wild beast of which the country was very full we asked him how he came to be so entirely abandoned of all concern for his safety he answered that to him that had so often wished for death life was not worth defending and that as he was entirely at the mercy of the negroes they had much the more confidence in him seeing he had no weapons to hurt them as for wild beasts he was not so much concerned about that for he scarce ever went from his hut but if he did the negro king and his men went all with him and they were all armed with bows and arrows and lances with which they would kill any of the ravenous creatures lions as well as others but that they seldom came abroad in the day and if the negroes wander anywhere in the night they always build a hut for themselves and make a fire at the door of it which is guard enough we inquired of him what we should next do towards getting to the seaside he told us we were about one hundred and twenty english leagues from the coast where almost all the european settlements and factories were and which is called the gold coast but that there were so many different nations of negroes in the way that it was ten to one if we were not either fought with continually or starved for want of provisions but that there were two other ways to go which if he had had any company to go with him he had often contrived to make his escape by the one was to travel full west though it was farther to go yet was not so full of people and the people we should find would be so much the similar to us or be so much the easier to fight with or that the other way was if possible to get to the Rio Grande and go down the stream in canoes we told him that was the way we had resolved on before we met him but then he told us there was a prodigious desert to go over and as prodigious woods to go through before we came to it and that both together were at least twenty days march for us travel as hard as we could we asked him if there were no horses in the country or asses or even bullocks or buffaloes to make use of in such a journey and we showed him hours of which we had but three left he said no the country did not afford anything of that kind he told us that in this great wood there were immense numbers of elephants and upon the desert great multitudes of lions lynxes tigers leopards etcetera and that it was to that wood and that desert that the negroes went to get elephants teeth where they never failed to find a great number we inquired still more particularly the way to the gold coast and if there were no rivers to ease us in our carriage and told him as to the negroes fighting with us we were not much concerned at that nor were we afraid of starving for if they had any victuals among them we would have our share of it and therefore if he would venture to show us the way we would venture to go and as for himself we told him we would live and die together and there should not a man of us stir from him he told us with all his heart if we resolved it and would venture we might be assured he would take his fate with us and he would endeavor to guide us in such a way as we should meet with some friendly savages who would use us well and perhaps stand by us against some others who were less tractable so in a word we all resolved to go full south for the gold coast the next morning he came to us again and being all met in council as we may call it he began to talk very seriously with us that since we were now come after a long journey to a view of the end of our troubles and had been so obliging to him as to offer to carry him with us he had been all night revolving in his mind what he and we all might do to make ourselves some amends for all our sorrows and first he said he was to let me know that we were just then in one of the richest parts of the world though it was really otherwise but a desolate disconsolate wilderness for says he there is not a river but runs gold not a desert but without plowing bears a crop of ivory what mines of gold what immense stores of gold those mountains may contain from whence these rivers came or the shores which these rivers run by we know not but may imagine that they must be inconceivably rich seen so much as washed down the stream by the water washing the sides of the land that the quantity suffices all the traders which the european world send the other we asked him how far they went for it seeing the ships only trade upon the coast he told us that the negroes on the coast search the rivers up for the length of one hundred and fifty or two hundred miles and would be out a month or two or three at a time and always come home sufficiently rewarded but says he they never come this far and yet hereabouts is as much gold as there upon this he told us that he believed he might have gotten a hundred pounds weight of gold since he came there if he had employed himself to look and work for it as he knew not what to do with it and had long since despaired of being ever delivered from the misery he was in he had entirely omitted it for what advantage had it been to me said he or what richer had I been if I had a ton of gold dust and lay and wallowed in it the richness of it said he would not give me one moment's felicity nor relieve me in the present exigency nay says he as you all see it would not buy me clothes to cover me or a drop of drink to save me from perishing it is of no value here says he there are several people among these huts that would weigh gold against a few glass beads or a cockle shell and give you a handful of gold dust for a handful of cowries note to Bene these are little shells which our children call blackamora's teeth when he had said thus he pulled out a piece of an earthen pot baked hard in the sun here says he is some of the dirt of this country and if I would I could have got a great deal more and showing it to us I believe there was in it between two or three pounds weight of gold dust of the same kind and color with that we had gotten already as before after we had looked at it a while he told us smiling we were his deliverers and all he had as well as his life was ours and therefore as this would be of value to us when we came to our own country so he desired we would accept of it among us and that was the only time that he had repented that he had picked up no more of it I spoke for him as his interpreter to my comrades and in their names thanked him but speaking to them in Portuguese I desired them to defer the acceptance of his kindness to the next morning and so I did telling him we would further talk of this part in the morning so we parted for that time when he was gone I found they were all wonderfully affected with his discourse and with the generosity of his temper as well as the magnificence of his present which in another place had been extraordinary upon the whole not to detain you with circumstances we agreed that seeing he was now one of our number and that as we were a relief to him in carrying him out of the dismal condition he was in so he was equally a relief to us in being our guide through the rest of the country our interpreter with the natives our director how to manage with the savages and how to enrich ourselves with the wealth of the country that therefore we would put his gold among our common stock and everyone should give him as much as would make his up just as much as any single share of our own and for the future we would take our lot together taking his solemn engagement to us as we had before one to another that we would not conceal the least grain of gold we found one from another in the next conference we acquainted him with the adventures of the golden river and how we had shared what we got there so that every man had a larger stock than he for his share that therefore instead of taking any from him we had resolved everyone to add a little to him he appeared very glad that we had met with such good success but would not take a grain from us till at last pressing him very hard he told us that then he would take it thus that when we came to get any more he would have so much out of the first as should make him even and then we would go on as equal adventurers and thus we agreed he then told us he thought it would not be an unprofitable adventure if before we set forward and after we had got a stock of provisions we should make a journey north to the edge of the desert he had told us of from whence our Negroes might bring everyone a large elephants tooth and that he would get some more to assist and that after a certain length of carriage they might be conveyed by canoes to the coast where they would yield a very great profit I objected to this on account of our design we had of getting gold dust and that our Negroes who we knew would be faithful to us would get much more by searching the rivers for gold for us than by lugging a great tooth of a hundred and fifty pounds weight a hundred miles or more which would be an insufferable labor to them after so hard a journey and would certainly kill them he acquiesced in the justice of this answer but feign would have had us gone to see the woody part of the hill and the edge of the desert that we might see how the elephants teeth lay scattered up and down there but when we told him the story of what we had seen before as is said above he said no more end of section 14 read by Dennis Sayers in Modesto California for LibriVox section 15 of Captain Singleton this LibriVox recording is in the public domain reading by Dennis Sayers the life adventures and piracies of the famous Captain Singleton by Daniel Defoe we stayed here twelve days during which time the natives were very obliging to us and brought us fruits pumpkins and a root like carrots though of quite another taste but not unpleasant neither and some guinea fowls whose names we did not know in short they brought us plenty of what they had and we lived very well and we gave them all such little things as our cutler had made for he now had a whole bag full of them on the thirteenth day we set forward taking our new gentleman with us at parting the Negro king sent two savages with a present to him of some dried flesh but I do not remember what it was and he gave him again three silver birds which our cutler helped him to which I assure you was a present for a king we traveled now south a little west and here we found the first river for above two thousand miles march whose waters run south all the rest running north or west we followed this river which was no bigger than a good large brook in England till it began to increase its water every now and then we found our Englishman went down as it were privately to the water which was to try the land at length after a day's march upon this river he came running up to us with his hands full of sand and saying look here upon looking we found that a good deal of gold lay spangled among the sand of the river now says he I think we may begin to work so he divided our Negroes into couples and set them to work to search and wash the sand and ooze in the bottom of the river where it was not deep in the first day in a quarter our men all together had gathered a pound and two ounces of gold were thereabouts and as we found the quantity increased the farther we went we followed it about three days till another small rivulet joined the first and then searching up the stream we found gold there too so we pitched our camp in the angle where the rivers joined and we diverted ourselves as I may call it in washing the gold out of the sand of the river and in getting provisions here we stayed thirteen days more in which time we had many pleasant adventures with the savages too long to mention here and some of them too homely to tell of for some of our men had made something free with their women which had not our new guide made peace for us with one of their men at the price of seven fine bits of silver which our artificer had cut out into the shapes of lions and fishes and birds and had punched holes to hang them up by and inestimable treasure we must have gone to war with them and all their people all the while we were busy washing gold dust out of the rivers and our negroes the like our ingenious cutler was hammering and cutting and he was grown so dexterous by use that he formed all manner of images he cut out elephants, tigers, civet cats, ostriches eagles, cranes, fowls, fishes and indeed whatever he pleased in thin plates of hammered gold for his silver and iron were almost all gone at one of the towns of the savage nations we were very friendly received by their king and as he was very much taken with our workmen's toys he sold him an elephant cut out of a gold plate as thin as a sixpence at an extravagant rate he was so much taken with it that he would not be quiet till he had given him almost a handful of gold dust as they call it I suppose it might weigh three quarters of a pound the piece of gold that the elephant was made of might be about the weight of a pistol rather less than more our artist was so honest, though the labor and art were all his own that he brought all the gold and put it into our common stock but we had indeed no manner of reason in the least to be covetous for as our new guide told us we that were strong enough to defend ourselves and had time enough to stay for we were none of us in haste might in time get together what quantity of gold we pleased even to a hundred pounds weight each man if we thought fit and therefore he told us though he had as much reason to be sick of the country as any of us yet if we thought to turn our march a little to the southeast and pitch upon a place proper for our headquarters we might find provisions plenty enough and extend ourselves over the country among the rivers for two or three years to the right and left and we should soon find the advantage of it the proposal however good as to the profitable part of it suited none of us for we were all more desirous to get home than to be rich being tired of the excessive fatigue of about a year's continual wandering among deserts and wild beasts however the tongue of our new acquaintance had a kind of charm in it and used such arguments and had so much the power of persuasion that there was no resisting him he told us it was preposterous not to take the fruit of all our labors now we were come to the harvest that we might see the hazard the europeans run with ships and men and at great expense to fetch a little gold and that we that were in the center of it to go away empty handed was unaccountable that we were strong enough to fight our way through whole nations and might make our journey afterward to what part of the coast we pleased and we should never forgive ourselves when we came to our own country to see that we had five hundred pistolias in gold and might as easily have had five thousand or ten thousand or what we pleased that he was no more covetous than we but seen it was in all our powers to retrieve our misfortunes at once and to make ourselves easy for all our lives he could not be faithful to us or grateful for the good we had done him if he did not let us see the advantage we had in our hands and he assured us he would make it clear to our own understanding that we might in two years time by good management and by the help of our negroes gather every man a hundred pounds weight of gold and get together perhaps two hundred ton of teeth whereas if once we pushed on to the coast and separated we should never be able to see that place again with our eyes or do any more than sinners did with heaven wish themselves there but no they can never come at it our surgeon was the first man that yielded to his reasoning and after him the gunner and they too indeed had a great influence over us but none of the rest had any mind to stay nor eye neither I must confess for I had no notion of a great deal of money or what to do with myself or what to do with it if I had it I thought I had enough already and all the thoughts I had about disposing of it if I came to Europe was only how to spend it as fast as I could buy me some new clothes and go to see again to be a drudge for more however he prevailed with us by his good words at last to stay but for six months in the country and then if we did resolve to go he would submit so at length we yielded to that and he carried us about fifty English miles southeast where we found several rivulets of water which seemed to come all from a great ridge of mountains which laid to the northeast and which by our calculation must be the beginning that way of the great waste which we had been forced northward to avoid here we found the country barren enough but yet we had by his direction plenty of food for the savages around us upon giving them some of our toys as I have so often mentioned brought us in whatever they had and here we found some maize or Indian wheat which the Negro women planted as we sow seeds in a garden and immediately our new provider ordered some of our Negroes to plant it and it grew up presently and by watering it often we had a crop in less than three months growth as soon as we were settled and our can't fixed we fell to the old trade of fishing for gold in the rivers mentioned above and our English gentleman so well knew how to direct our search that we scarce ever lost our labor one time having set us to work he asked if we would give him leave with four or five Negroes to go out for six or seven days to seek his fortune and see what he could discover in the country assuring us whatever he got should be for the public stock we all gave him our consent and lent him a gun and two of our men desiring to go with him they took then six Negroes with them and two of our buffaloes that came with us the whole journey they took about eight days provision of bread with them but no flesh except about as much dried flesh as would serve them two days they traveled up to the top of the mountains I mentioned just now where they saw as our men afterwards vouched it to be the same desert which we so justly terrified at when we were on the farther side and which by our calculation could not be less than three hundred miles broad and above six hundred miles in length without knowing where it ended the journal of their travels is too long to enter upon here they stayed out two and fifty days when they brought us seventeen pound and something more for we had no exact weight of gold dust some of it in much larger pieces than any we had found before besides about fifteen ton of elephants teeth which he had partly by good usage and partly by bad obliged the savages of the country to fetch and bring down to him from the mountains and which he had made others bring with him quite down to our camp indeed we wondered what was coming to us when we saw him attended with above two hundred negroes but he soon undeceived us when he made them all throw down their burdens on a heap at the entrance of our camp besides this they brought two lion skins and five leopard skins very large and very fine he asked our pardon for his long stay and that he had made no greater a booty but told us he had one excursion more to make which he hoped should turn to a better account having rested himself and rewarded the savages that brought the teeth for him with some bits of silver and iron cut out diamond fashion and with two shaped like little dogs he sent them away mightily pleased the second journey he went some more of our men desired to go with him and they made a troop of ten white men ten savages and the two buffaloes to carry their provisions and ammunition they took the same course not exactly the same track and they stayed thirty two days only in which time they killed no less than fifteen leopards three lions and several other creatures and brought us home four and twenty pound some ounces of gold dust and only six elephants teeth but they were very great ones our friend the Englishman showed us that now our time was well bestowed for in five months which we had stayed here we had gathered so much gold dust that when we came to share it we had five pound and a quarter to a man besides what we had before and besides six or seven pound weight which we had at several times given our artificers to make bubbles with and now we talked of going forward to the coast to put an end to our journey but our guide laughed at us then nay you can't go now says he for the rainy season begins next month and there will be no stirring then this we found indeed reasonable so we resolved to furnish ourselves with provisions that we might not be obliged to go abroad too much in the rain and we spread ourselves some one way and some another as far as we cared to venture to get provisions and our Negroes killed us some deer which we cured as well as we could in the sun for we had now no salt by this time the rainy months were set in and we could scarce for above two months look out of our huts but that was not all for the rivers were so swell with land floods that we scarce knew the little Brooks and rivulets from the great navigable rivers this had been a very good opportunity to have conveyed by water upon rafts are elephants teeth of which we had a very great pile for as we always gave the savages some reward for their labor the very women would bring us teeth upon every opportunity and sometimes a great tooth carried between two so that our quantity was increased to about two and twenty ton of teeth as soon as the weather proved fair again he told us he would not press us to any further stay since we did not care whether we got any more gold or no that we were indeed the first men he ever met with in his life that said they had gold enough and of whom it might be truly said that when it lay under our feet we would not stoop to take it up but since he had made us a promise he would not break it nor press us to make any further stay only he thought he ought to tell us that now was the time after the land flood when the greatest quantity of gold was found and that if we stayed but one month we should see thousands of savages spread themselves over the whole country to wash the gold out of the sand for the European ships which would come on the coast that they do it then because the rage of the floods always works down a great deal of gold out of the hills and if we took the advantage to be there before them we did not know what extraordinary things we might find this was so forcible and so well argued that it appeared in all our faces we were prevailed upon so we told him we would all stay for though it was true we were all eager to be gone yet the evident prospect of so much advantage could not well be resisted that he was greatly mistaken when he suggested that we did not desire to increase our store of gold and in that we were resolved to make the utmost use of the advantage that was in our hands and would stay as long as any gold was to be had if it was another year he could hardly express the joy he was in on this occasion and the fair weather coming on we began just as he directed to search about the rivers for more gold at first we had but little encouragement and began to be doubtful but it was very plain that the reason was the water was not fully fallen or the rivers reduced to their usual channel but in a few days we were fully requited and found much more gold than at first and in bigger lumps and one of our men washed out of the sand a piece of gold as big as a small nut which weighed by our estimation for we had no small weights almost an ounce and a half this success made us extremely diligent and in little more than a month we had altogether gotten near sixty pound weight of gold but after this as he told us we found abundance of the savages men women and children hunting every river and brook and even the dry land of the hills for gold so that we could do nothing like them compared to what we had done before but our artificer found a way to make other people find us in gold without our own labor for when these people began to appear he had a considerable quantity of his toys birds, beasts, etc. such as before ready for them and the English gentleman being the interpreter he brought the savages to admire them so our cutler had trade enough and to be sure sold his goods at a monstrous rate for he would get an ounce of gold sometimes two for a bit of silver perhaps the value of a groat nay if it were iron and if it was of gold they would not give the more for it and it was incredible almost to think what a quantity of gold he got that way in a word to bring this happy journey to a conclusion we increased our stock of gold here in three months stay more to such a degree that bringing it all to a common stock in order to share it we divided almost four pound weight again to every man and then we set forward for the gold coast to see what method we could find out for our passage into Europe there happened several remarkable incidents in this part of our journey as to how we were or were not received friendly by the several nations of savages through which we passed how we delivered one negro king from captivity who had been a benefactor to our new guide and now our guide in gratitude by our assistance restored him to his kingdom which perhaps might contain about three hundred subjects how he entertained us and how he made his subjects go with our Englishmen and fetch all our elephants teeth which we had been obliged to leave behind us and to carry them for us to the river the name of which I forgot where we made rafts and in eleven days more came down to one of the Dutch settlements on the gold coast where we arrived in perfect health and to our great satisfaction as for our cargo of teeth we sold it to the Dutch factory and received clothes and other necessaries for ourselves and such of our negroes as we thought fit to keep with us and it is to be observed that we had four pound of gunpowder left when we ended our journey the negro prince we made perfectly free clothed him out of our common stock and gave him a pound and a half of gold for himself which he knew very well how to manage and here we all parted after the most friendly manner possible our Englishmen remained in the Dutch factory some time and as I heard afterwards died there of grief for he having sent a thousand pounds sterling over to England by the way of Holland for his refuge at his return to his friends the ship was taken by the French and the effects all lost the rest of my comrades went away in a small bark to the two Portuguese factories near Gambia in the latitude of fourteen and I with two negroes which I kept with me went away to Cape Coast Castle where I got passage for England and arrived there in September and thus ended my first harvest of wild oats the rest were not sewed to so much advantage I had neither friend relation nor acquaintance in England though it was my native country I had consequently no 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 and hastily squandering away the rest all that great sum which I got with so much pains and hazard was gone in little more than two years time and as I even rage in my own thoughts to reflect upon the manner how it was wasted so I need record no more the rest merits to be concealed with blushes for that it was spent in all kinds of folly and wickedness so this scene of my life may be said to have begun in theft and ended in luxury a sad setting out and a worse coming home end of section 15 read by Dennis Sayers in Modesto California for LibriVox section 16 of Captain Singleton this LibriVox recording is in the public domain read by Dennis Sayers The Life Adventures and Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton by Daniel Defoe about the year I began to see the bottom of my stock and that it was time to think of further adventures for my spoilers as I call them began to let me know that as my money declined their respect would ebb with it and that I had nothing to expect of them further than as I might command it by the force of my money which in short would not go an inch the further for all that had been spent in their favor before this shocked me very much and I conceived a just abhorrence of their ingratitude but it wore off nor had I met with any regret at the wasting so glorious a sum of money as I brought to England with me I next shipped myself in an evil hour to be sure on a voyage to Cateeth in the ship called Blank and in the course of our voyage being on the coast of Spain was obliged to put in at groin by a strong southwest wind here I fell into company with some masters of mischief and among them one forwarder than the rest began an intimate confidence with me so that we called one another brothers and communicated all our circumstances to one another his name was Harris this fellow came to me one morning asking me if I would go on shore and I agreed so we got the captain's leave for the boat and went together 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 then asked me if I would swear to be secret and that if I did not agree to what he proposed I would nevertheless never betray him I readily bound myself to that upon the most solemn implications and curses that the devil and both of us could invent he told me then there was a brave fellow in the other ship pointing to another English ship which rode in the harbor who in concert with some of the men 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 and he got eight of us to join with him and he told us that as soon as his friend had begun the work and was master of the ship he should be ready to do the like this was his plot and I without the least hesitation either at the villainy of the fact or the difficulty of performing it came immediately into the wicked conspiracy and so it went on among us but we could not bring our part to perfection accordingly on the day appointed his correspondent in the other ship whose name was Wilmot began the work and having seized the captain's mate and other officers secured the ship and gave the signal to us we were but eleven in our ship who were in the conspiracy nor could we get any more that we could trust so that leaving the ship we all took the boat and went off to join the other having thus left the ship I was in we were entertained with a great deal of joy by captain Wilmot and his new gang and being well prepared for all manner of roguery bold desperate I mean myself without the least checks of conscience for what I was entered upon or for anything I might do much less with any apprehension of what might be the consequence of it I say having thus embarked with this crew which at last brought me to consort with the most famous pirates of the age some of whom have ended their journals at the gallows I think the giving an account of some of my other adventures may be an agreeable piece of story and this I may venture to say beforehand upon the word of a pirate that I shall not be able to recollect the full not by far of the great variety which has formed one of the most reprobate schemes that ever man was capable to present to the world I that was as I have hinted before 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 are now to call him being thus possessed of a ship and in the manner as you have heard it may be easily concluded he had nothing to do to stay in the port or to wait either the attempts that might be made from the shore or any change that might happen among his men on the contrary we weighed anchor the same tide and stood out to see steering away for the canaries our ship had twenty two guns but was able to carry thirty and besides as she was fitted for a merchant ship only she was not furnished either with ammunition or small arm sufficient for our design or for the occasion we might have in case of a fight so we put into cottage that is to say we came to an anchor in the bay and the captain and one whom we called young captain kid who was the gunner landed and some of the men who could best be trusted among whom was my comrade Harris who was made second mate and myself who was made a lieutenant some veils of English goods were proposed to be carried on shore with us for sale but my comrade who was a complete fellow at his business proposed a better way for it and having been in the town before told us in short that he would buy what powder and bullet small arms or anything else we wanted on his own word to be paid for when they came on board in such English goods as we had there this was much the best way and accordingly he and the captain went on shore by themselves and having made such a bargain as they found for their turn came away again in two hours time and bringing only a butt of wine and five casts of brandy with them we all went on board again the next morning two barcos longos came off to us deeply laden with five spaniards on board them for traffic our captain sold them good penny worths and they delivered a sixteen barrels of powder twelve small runlets of fine powder for our small arms sixty muskets and twelve fussis for the officers seventeen ton of cannonball fifteen barrels of musket bullets with some swords and twenty good pair of pistols besides this they brought thirteen butts of wine for we that were now all become gentlemen scorn to drink the ship's beer also sixteen punches of brandy and twelve barrels of raisins and twenty chests of lemons all which we paid for in English goods and over and above the captain received six hundred pieces of eight in money they would have come again but we would not stay longer from hence we sailed to the canaries and from thence onward to the west indies where we committed some depredation among the spaniards for provisions and took some prizes but none of them of any great value while I remained with them which was not long at that time for having taken a Spanish loop on the coast of Carthagena my friend made a motion to me that we should desire captain Wilmot to put us into the sloop with a portion of arms and ammunition and let us try what we could do she being much fitter for our business than the great ship and a better sailor this he consented to and we appointed our rendezvous at Tobago making an agreement that whatever was taken by either of our ships should be shared among the ship's company of both all which we very punctually observed and joined our ships again about fifteen months after at the island of Tobago as above we cruised near two years in the seas chiefly upon the spaniards not that we made any difficulty of taking English ships or Dutch or French if they came in our way and particularly captain Wilmot attacked a new England ship bound from the Maderas to Jamaica and another bound from New York to Barbados with provisions which last was a very happy supply to us 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 captain Wilmot was indeed more particularly cruel when he took any English vessel that they might not too soon have advice of him in England and so the men of war have orders to look out for him but this part I bury in silence for the present we increased our stock in these two years considerably having taken 60,000 pieces of aid 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 built at Virginia an excellency boat and a good sailor and able to carry twelve guns and a large Spanish frigate built ship that sailed incomparably well also and which afterwards by the help of good carpenters we fitted up to carry 28 guns and now we wanted more hands so we put away for the bay of Campeche not doubting we should ship as many men there as we pleased so we did here we sold the sloop that I was in and captain Wilmot keeping his own ship I took the command of the Spanish frigate as captain and my comrade Harris as eldest lieutenant and a bold enterprising fellow he was as any the world afforded one culver dine was put into the brigantine so that we were now three stout ships well manned and victualed for twelve months for we had taken two or three sloops from New England and New York laden with flour, peas and barreled 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 bullet 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 though for their own security in case of accidents they might easily pretend they were carried away by force by which I shall give a pleasant account in the course of my explanations 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 but he was not employed in the sloop as a surgeon but was going to Barbados to get a birth as the sailors call it however he had all his surgeons chests on board 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-humored and pleasant in his conversation and a bold stout brave fellow too as any we had among us I found William, as I thought 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 and to this purpose he comes to me friend says he 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 this loop which I am on board to certify under his hand that I was taken away by force and against my will and this he said with so much satisfaction in his face that I could not but understand him aye aye says I whether it be against your will or no I'll make him and all the men give you a certificate of it or I'll take them all along with us and keep them till they do 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 that they carried away his chest and instruments first and then bound his hands behind him and forced him into their boat and this was signed by the master and all his men accordingly I fell a swearing at him and called to my men to tie his hands behind him and so we put him into our boat and carried him away when I had him on board I called him to me now friend says aye I have brought you away by force it is true but I am not of the opinion I have brought you away so much against your will as they imagine come says aye you will be a useful man to us you shall have very good usage among us so I unbound his hands and first ordered all the things that belong to him to be restored to him and our captain gave him a dram thou hast dealt friendly by me says he and I will be playing with thee whether I came willing to thee or not I shall make myself as useful to thee as I can 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 and he knew it well enough but in short he was a sprightly fellow and fitter to be captain than any of us I shall have often an occasion to speak of him in the rest of the story our cruising so long in the seas began now to be so well known that not in England only but in France and Spain accounts had been made public of our adventures and many stories told how we murdered the people in cold blood tying them back to back throwing them into the sea one half of which however was not true though more was done than is fit to speak of here the consequence of this however was that several English men of war were sent to the West Indies and were particularly instructed to cruise in the Bay of Mexico and the Gulf of Florida and among the Bahama Islands if possible to attack us we were not so ignorant of things as not to expect this after so long a stay in that part of the world but the first certain account we had of them was at Honduras when a vessel coming in from Jamaica told us that two English men of war were coming directly from Jamaica thither in quest of us we were indeed as it were imbaid and could not have made the least shift to have got off if they had come directly to us but as it happened somebody had informed them that we were in the Bay of Campeche and they went directly thither by which we were not only free of them but were so much to the windward of them that they could not make any attempt upon us though they had known we were there we took this advantage and stood away for Carthagena and from thence, with great difficulty beat it up at a distance from under the shore for St. Martha till we came to the Dutch island of Curacoa and from thence to the island of Tobago which as before was our rendezvous which being a deserted uninhabited island we at the same time made use of for a retreat here the captain of the Brigantine died and Captain Harris, at that time my lieutenant took the command of the Brigantine here we came to a resolution to go away to the coast of Brazil and from thence to the Cape of Good Hope and so for the East Indies but Captain Harris, as I have said being now captain of the Brigantine alleged that his ship was too small for so long a voyage but that if Captain Wilmot would consent he would take the hazard of another cruise and he would follow us in the first ship he could take so we appointed our rendezvous to be at Madagascar which was done by my recommendation of the place and the plenty of provisions to be had there accordingly he went away from us in an evil hour for instead of taking a ship to follow us he was taken, as I heard afterwards by an English man of war and being laid in irons died of mere grief and anger before he came to England his lieutenant, I have heard was afterwards executed in England for a pirate and this was the end of the man who first brought me into this unhappy trade we parted from Tobago three days after bending our course for the coast of Brazil but had not been at sea above twenty four hours when we were separated by a terrible storm which held three days with very little abatement or intermission in this juncture Captain Wilmot happened, and luckily to be on board my ship to his great mortification for we not only lost sight of his ship but never saw her more till we came to Madagascar where she was cast away in short after having in this tempest lost our four topmost we were forced to put back to the island of Tobago for shelter and to repair our damage which brought us all very near our destruction we were no sooner on shore and all very busy looking out for a piece of timber for a topmast but we perceived standing in for the shore an English man of war of thirty six guns it was a great surprise to us indeed because we were disabled so much but to our great good fortune we lay pretty snug and close among the high rocks and the man of war did not see us but stood off again upon his cruise so we only observed which way she went and at night leaving our work resolved to stand off to sea steering the contrary way from that which we observed she went and this we found had the desired success for we saw him no more we had gotten an old mizzen topmast on board which made us a jury for a topmast for the present and so we stood away for the Isle of Trinidad where though there were Spaniards on shore yet we landed some men with our boat and cut a very good piece of fur to make us a new topmast which we got fitted up effectually and also we got some cattle here to eke out our provisions and calling a council of war among ourselves we resolved to quit those seas for the present and steer away for the coast of Brazil the first thing we attempted here was only getting fresh water but we learned that there lay the Portuguese fleet at the Bay of All Saints bound for Lisbon ready to sail and only waited for a fair wind this made us lie by wishing to see them put to sea and accordingly as they were with or without convoy to attack or avoid them it sprung up a fresh gale in the evening at southwest by west which being fair for the Portugal fleet and the weather pleasant and agreeable we heard the signal given to unmoor and running in under the island of Sae, Blanc we hauled our mainsail and forso up in the brails lowered the top sails upon the cap and clued them up that we might lie a snug as we could expecting they're coming out and the next morning saw the whole fleet come out accordingly but not at all to our satisfaction for they consisted of twenty-six sail and most of them ships of force as well as birthing both merchant men and men of war so seeing there was no meddling we lay still where we were also till the fleet was out of sight and then stood off and on in hopes of meeting with further purchase it was not long before we saw a sail and immediately gave her chase but she proved an excellent sailor and standing out to sea we saw plainly she trusted to her heels that is to say to her sails however as we were a clean ship we gained upon her though slowly and had we had a day before us we should certainly have come up with her but it grew dark apace and in that case we knew we should lose sight of her our merry Quaker perceiving us to crowd still after her in the dark wherein we could not see which way she went came very dryly to me friend Singleton says he doesst he know what we are a doing says I yes why we are chasing yon ship are we not and how does thou know that says he very gravely still nay that's true says I again we cannot be sure yes friend says he I think we may be sure that we are running away from her not chasing her I'm afraid as he thou art turned Quaker and hast resolved not to use the hand of power or art a coward and art flying from thy enemy what do you mean says I I think I swore at him what do you sneer at now you have always one dry rub or another to give us nay says he it is plain enough the ship stood off to sea to east on purpose to lose us and thou mayst be sure her business does not lie that way for what should she do at the coast of Africa in this latitude which should be as far south as Congo or Angola but as soon as it is dark that we would lose sight of her she will tack and stand away west again for the Brazil coast and for the bay where thou knowest she was going before and are we not then running away from her I am greatly in hopes friend says the dry jibing creature thou wilt turn Quaker for I see thou art not for fighting very well William says I then I shall make an excellent pirate however William was in the right and I apprehended what he meant immediately and captain Wilmot who lay very sick in his cabin overhearing us understood him as well as I and called out to me that William was right and it was our best way to change our course and stand away for the bay where it was ten to one but we should snap her in the morning end of section 16 read by Dennis Sayers in Modesto, California for Librabox