She had only three four-pounders, which were altogether {156} unserviceable, their carriages being scarcely able to support them: and there were no small arms on board, except a few pistols belonging to the passengers. The prisoners informed us that they left Callao in company with two other ships, whom they had parted with some days before, and that at first they conceived us to be one of their company; and by the description we gave them of the ship we had chased from Juan Fernandes, they assured us she was of their number, but that the coming in sight of that island was directly repugnant to the merchants' instructions, who had expressly forbid it, as knowing that if any English squadron was in those seas, the island of Fernandes was most probably the place of their rendezvous. After this short account of the ship and her cargoe, it is necessary that I should relate the important intelligence which we met with on board her, partly from the information of the prisoners, and partly from the letters and papers which fell into our hands. We here first learnt with certainty the force and destination of that squadron which cruized off the Maderas at our arrival there, and afterwards chased the _Pearl_ in our passage to Port St. Julian. This we now knew was a squadron composed of five large Spanish ships, commanded by Admiral Pizarro, and purposely fitted out to traverse our designs, as hath been already more amply related in the third chapter of the first book. We had at the same time, too, the satisfaction to find that Pizarro, after his utmost endeavours to gain his passage into these seas, had been forced back again into the river of Plate, with the loss of two of his largest ships. And besides this disappointment of Pizarro, which, considering our great debility, was no unacceptable intelligence, we farther learnt, that though an embargo had been laid upon all shipping in these seas by the Viceroy of Peru, in the month of May preceding, on a supposition that about that time we might arrive upon the coast, yet it now no longer subsisted: for on the account sent overland by Pizarro of his own distresses, part of which they knew we must have encountered, as we were at sea during the same time, and on their having no news of us in eight months after we were known to set sail from St. Catherine's, they were fully satisfied that we were either shipwrecked, or had perished at sea, or, at least, had been obliged to put back again, as it was conceived impossible for any ships to {157} continue at sea during so long an interval: and therefore, on the application of the merchants, and the firm persuasion of our having miscarried, the embargo had been lately taken off.