This last article made us flatter ourselves that, as the enemy was still a stranger to our having got round Cape Horn, and the navigation of these seas was restored, we might meet with some valuable captures, and might thereby indemnify ourselves for the incapacity we were under of attempting any of their considerable settlements on shore. And thus much we were certain of, from the information of our prisoners, that, whatever our success might be, as to the prizes we might light on, we had nothing to fear, weak as we were, from the Spanish force in this part of the world, though we discovered that we had been in most imminent peril from the enemy when we least apprehended it, and when our other distresses were at the greatest height; for we learnt, from the letters on board, that Pizarro, in the express he dispatched to the Viceroy of Peru, after his return to the river of Plate, had intimated to him that it was possible some part at least of the English squadron might get round; but that, as he was certain from his own experience that if they did arrive in those seas it must be in a very weak and defenceless condition, he advised the viceroy, in order to be secure at all events, to send what ships of war he had to the southward, where, in all probability, they would intercept us singly, before we had an opportunity of touching at any port for refreshment; in which case he doubted not but we should prove an easy conquest. The Viceroy of Peru approved of this advice, and as he had already fitted out four ships of force from Callao--one of fifty guns, two of forty guns, and one of twenty-four guns, which were intended to join Pizarro when he arrived on the coast of Chili--the viceroy now stationed three of these off the Port of Conception, and one of them at the island of Fernandes, where they continued cruizing for us till the 6th of June, and then not seeing anything of us, and conceiving it to be impossible that we could have kept the seas so long, they quitted their cruise and returned to Callao, fully persuaded that we had either perished, or at least had been driven back. Now, as the time of their quitting their stations was but a few days before our arrival at the island of Fernandes, it is evident that had we made that island on our first search for it, without haling in for the main to secure our easting (a circumstance which at that time we considered {158} as very unfortunate to us, on account of the numbers which we lost by our longer continuance at sea)--had we, I say, made the island on the 28th of May, when we first expected to see it, and were in reality very near it, we had doubtless fallen in with some part of the Spanish squadron; and in the distressed condition we were then in, the meeting with a healthy, well-provided enemy was an incident that could not but have been perplexing, and might perhaps have proved fatal, not only to us, but to the _Tryal_, the _Gloucester_, and the _Anna_ pink, who separately joined us, and