In this extremity, for I was really very much concerned about it, one of my doctors came to me, and told me he had been at the city (that is, at Lima) to buy some drugs and medicines, to recruit his chest, and he had fallen into company with an Irish Jesuit, who, he found, was an extraordinary good physician, and that he had had some discourse with him about our sick men, and he believed for a good word or two, he could persuade him to come and visit them. I was very loath to consent to it, and said to the surgeon, If he is an Irishman, he speaks English, and he will presently perceive that we are all Englishmen, and so we shall be betrayed; all our designs will be blown up at once, and our farther measures be all broken; and therefore I would not consent. This I did not speak from the fear of any hurt they could have done me by force, for I had no reason to value that, being able to have fought my way clear out of their seas, if I had been put to it; but, as I had traded all the way by stratagem, and had many considerable views still behind, I was unwilling to be disappointed by the discovery of my schemes, or that the Spaniards should know upon what a double foundation I acted, and how I was a French ally and merchant, or an English enemy and privateer, just as I pleased, and as opportunity should offer; in which case they would have been sure to have trepanned me if possible, under pretence of the former, and have used me, if they ever should get an advantage over me, as one of the latter. This made me very cautious, and I had good reason for it too; and yet the sickness and danger of my men pressed me very hard to have the advice of a good physician, if it was possible, and especially to be satisfied whether it was really the plague or no, for I was very uneasy about that. But my surgeon told me, that, as to my apprehension of discovery, he would undertake to prevent it by this method. First, he said, he found that the Irishman did not understand French at all, and so I had nothing to do but to order, that, when he came on board, as little English should be spoke in his hearing as possible; and this was not difficult, for almost all our men had a little French at their tongue's end, by having so many Frenchmen on board of them; others had the Levant jargon, which they call Lingua Frank; so that, if they had but due caution, it could not be suddenly perceived what countrymen they were. Besides this, the surgeon ordered, that as soon as the Padre came on board, he should be surrounded with French seamen only, some of whom should be ordered to follow him from place to place, and chop in with their nimble tongues, upon some occasion or other, so that he should hear French spoken wherever he turned himself.