Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 3Sylvester, Charles Herbert
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Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 3
Sylvester, Charles Herbert
Children's literature; Literature -- Collections
with him, have been hunting you these two hours; the boatswain is
killed, Will Fry is wounded, and I am a prisoner; and if you do not
yield you are all lost."--"Will they give us quarter then?" says Tom
Smith, "and we will yield."---"I'll go and ask, if you promise to
yield," said Robinson; so he asked the captain. And the captain
himself then calls out, "You, Smith, you know my voice; if you lay
down your arms immediately, and submit, you shall have your lives,
all but Will Atkins."
Upon this, Will Atkins cried out, "For God's sake, captain, give me
quarter; what have I done? They have all been as bad as I" (which, by
the way, was not true; for, it seems, this Will Atkins was the first
man that laid hold of the captain, when they first mutinied, and used
him barbarously, in tying his hands, and giving him injurious
language); however, the captain told him he must lay down his arms at
discretion, and trust to the Governor's mercy; by which he meant me,
for they all called me Governor. In a word, they all laid down their
arms, and begged their lives; and I sent the man that had parleyed
with them, and two more, who bound them all; and then my great army of
fifty men, which, with those three, were in all but eight, came up and
seized upon them, and upon their boat; only that I kept myself and one
more out of sight, for reasons of state.
Our next work was to repair the boat, and think of seizing the ship;
and as for the captain, now he had leisure to parley with them, he
expostulated with them upon the villainy of their practices with him,
and at length upon the further wickedness of their design, and how
certainly it must bring them to misery and distress in the end, and
perhaps to the gallows. They all appeared very penitent, and begged
hard for their lives. As for that, he told them they were not his
prisoners, but the commander's of the island; that they thought they
had set him on shore in a barren, uninhabited island; but it had
pleased God so to direct them, that it was inhabited, and that the
Governor was an Englishman; that he might hang them all there if he
pleased; but, as he had given them all quarter, he supposed he would
send them to England, to be dealt with there as justice required,
except Atkins, whom he was commanded by the Governor to advise to
prepare for death; for that he would be hanged in the morning.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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