A New Voyage Round the World by a Course Never Sailed BeforeDefoe, Daniel
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A New Voyage Round the World by a Course Never Sailed Before
Defoe, Daniel
Adventure stories; Voyages around the world -- Fiction
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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