We were first taken under the bow with a current setting from the lee of one island: (there being several) then immediately under the quarter with another, so that the ship could not answer her helm. At last the most powerful of these currents horsed her away on the west shore, into three fathom and a half, where the torrent ran with such impetuosity, and the ground was so foul, that the sand appear’d on the surface from the bottom: all which together afforded us a dismal prospect. However the anchor brought her up, which if we had not let go when we did, every man of us must inevitably have perish’d: for had she touch’d the bottom there, she must in a moment have gone to pieces, or overset by the strength of the current. According to this description, the reader, tho’ unacquainted with seamanship, will easily conceive that every soul of us was in the utmost danger by the unwarrantable procedings of this one obstinate man: Tho’ to do justice to my enemy, I must allow captain _Shelvocke_ to be as able a seaman and artist as perhaps any whatever; which still makes his guilt in this affair the more enormous. To confirm what I have already said, the ship, while riding here, kept continually on the sheer, till the cable was so rubb’d and gaul’d by the rocks, that it was stranded, and then it parted: But _Shelvocke_ will have it, p. 80. that the great strain it then bore, was occasion’d by the wind blowing fresh: whereas if it had blown more than a moderate gale, we could not have kept our topsails loose; which very providentially saved all our lives: for as soon as we found her adrift, we back’d her off to the eastward, the tide being chang’d; but had she cast with her head to the westward, our voyage must infallibly have terminated there with our lives. As to the reasons he gives for going to this place, they are all invented and made at home. He says, p. 77. _La Fontaine_, the _Frenchman_ we had out of the _Ruby_, gave him great hopes and ideas of the place, for that he had been there; but I am sure that ship never touch’d to the southward, farther than _Conception_: and then he says that _Frenchman_’s assurances prevail’d upon us all unanimously to go to this island: whereas, as I said before, we all too well knew the danger and vanity of it, (to call it no worse) and labour’d in vain to dissuade him from it. I have given the reader many specimens of _Shelvocke_’s hypocrisy and baseness; here follows an instance of his ill manners. At our arrival in the harbour of _Chiloe_, _Shelvocke_, by the advice of _La Port_ our third lieutenant, hoisted _French_ colours, and assumes the name of _Janis le Breton_; and the _Speedwel_ he calls the _St. Rose_, in which the said _Le Breton_ had made several voyages in these Seas.