On the 5th of _June_, 1719, we met a _Portuguese_ merchantman near _Cape Frio_. Our captain order’d the Emperor’s colours to be hoisted, which, without any reflection, look the most thief-like of any worn by honest men: those of his Imperial Majesty are a black spread eagle in a yellow field, and those of the pyrates a yellow field and black human skeleton; which at a small distance are not easily distinguished, especially in light gales of wind. So he brings her to, by firing a musket thwart her forefoot; sends aboard her the best busker (as he himself call’d _Hatley_) with a boat’s crew; each man arm’d with a cutlass and a case of pistols. The _Portuguese_ not only imagines his ship made prize, but thinks also how he shall undergo that piece of discipline used by the merry blades in the _West-Indies_, call’d blooding and sweating; which is done by making the captain, on the ill report of his men, or his declining to discover where his money is hid, to run the gantlet naked thro’ the pyrate’s crew; each of them furnish’d with a sail-needle, pricking him in the buttocks, back and shoulders; thus bleeding they put him into a sugar cask swarming with cock-roaches, cover him with a blanket, and there leave him to glut the vermin with his blood. _Don Pedro_, to save his bacon, took care however to be very officious or yare handed (as we say) with his present: For no sooner was _Hatley_ on his quarter-deck, but the _Portuguese_ seamen began to hand into the boat the fruits and refreshments they had aboard, as plantins, bananas, lemons, oranges, pomgranates, _&c._ three or four dozen boxes of marmalade and other sweatmeats; some _Dutch_ cheeses, and a large quantity of sugars.----If they had stopp’d here, it was well enough, and might pass as a present; but after this there came above a dozen pieces of silk, several of which were flower’d with gold and silver, worth, at least, three pound a yard, by retale; several dozen of _China_ plates and basins, a small _Japan_ cabinet; not to mention what the men took, who on seeing the _Portuguese_ so brisk at handing their things into the boat, concluded immediately they had as good a right to a present, as any body else. So on board they go, laying hold on what came next to hand: In short, as ’twas all a present, I can’t see who could pretend to restrain them. Among other things, _Hatley_ brought the last and handsomest present of all, a purse of 300 moydors.