Very ingenious was the way in which this Rawlins was weaving his net gradually but surely around the ship. He succeeded in persuading the captain to head for Cape Finisterre, pretending that thereabouts they would be likely to come upon a ship to be pillaged. This was perfectly true, though the Englishman’s intention was to get the _Exchange_ farther and farther from the Straits of Gibraltar, so that it became less and less likely that the corsairs would send out reinforcements. On the 6th of February, when about thirty-six miles off the Cape, a sail was descried. The _Exchange_ gave chase and came up with her, “making her strike all her sails: whereby we knew her to be a bark belonging to Torbay, near Dartmouth.” She was laden with a cargo of salt, and her crew consisted of nine men and a boy. But it came on bad weather, so the _Exchange_ did not then launch her boat, but ordered the Torbay ship to let down her boat. Her master, with five men and the boy, now rowed off to the _Exchange_, leaving behind his mate and two men in the bark. The Turkish captain now sent ten Moslems to man her. Now among these ten were two Dutch and one English renegadoes “who were of our confederacy.” Just as the latter were about to hoist out their boat from the _Exchange_, Rawlins was able to have a hurried conversation with them. He quickly warned them it was his intention that night or the next to put his plan into action, and he advised these men to inform the mate and two men of the Torbay bark of this plot and then make for England, “bearing up the helm, whiles the Turks slept and suspected no such matter.” Rawlins reminded them that in his first watch, about midnight, he would show them a light by which the men on the bark might know that the plan was already in action. So the boat was let down from the _Exchange_ and rowed off to the Torbay bark. The confederates then told the mate of their intention, and he entirely approved of the plan, though at first amazed by its ingenuity. The fact was that the idea was really much simpler than was at first apparent. Being sailors the English “had the helm of the ship,” for the Turks, being only soldiers and ignorant of sea affairs, could not say whether their vessel were sailing in the direction of Algiers or in the opposite direction. They knew nothing of navigation and practically nothing of seamanship, so they were, in spite of all their brutality, more at the mercy of the Christians than they had realised. But, resolved the plotters, if by any chance these Moslems should guess that the ship was sailing away from Algiers then they would at once cut the Turks’ throats, and then throw their bodies overboard. It will be remembered that the master and some of the Torbay bark’s crew were now in the _Exchange_, and Rawlins made it his business to approach these men tactfully and ask them to share in the plan. This they resolved to do.