privateer, a tartan of four guns, commanded by Captain Coxon, having surprised her in a creek where she was careening. We questioned these Indians respecting the galleon which the Spanish prisoner at Jamaica had told us of. They know that many rich ships sailed annually from Carthagena to Old Spain, but could tell no particulars, conjecturing, however, that if any vessel with a freight of price were now fitting for sea, she would sail after the return of the armadilloes to Carthagena, judging that they would have, for the present, cleared the coast. This information, which jumped with our own ideas, made us very anxious to take in what provisions we stood in want of, and be off to the westward; and the same afternoon the friendly Indians piloted the schooner into a very snug bay, where we lay with trees all round us, except at one point where an opening in the woods conducted to a noble savannah, whither we often went to hunt. While we lay here, all hands were fully occupied. Upon the beach, near the schooner, we erected a place for preparing boucan, which we preferred to regularly salted meat: and of which Nicky Hamstring, who had a natural turn for cooking in all its branches, was appointed superintendent. Then the Mosquito men went daily in their canoe, and struck turtle and manatee. Hunting parties, whereof I generally made one, explored the woods and brought good store of peccary and deer down to the boucan. We shot also the tender young monkies, who often made my heart sore by their screaming and moaning when they felt the lead, and by the pitiful way in which, when they came by a broken bone, they would handle the useless limb, and grin and weep with the pain. Besides these, we made food of the guanas or yellow lizards, who live amid the branches, and love to bask in the sun upon the topmost boughs, and also of a species of red land-crab, which our men call soldiers, from their colour, and which run nimbly about, generally at the roots of trees, hiding themselves quickly in holes, and burrowing like rabbits. The Indians who conducted our schooner into the bay, lived with others not far off, in smoky huts, which were surrounded by patches of cleared land, wherein they grew good store of yams and plantains, which they sold very willingly for hatchets, saws, and such like implements, with powder and lead. Meantime, while a great part of the crew were thus busy on shore, Captain Jem, with the hands who remained on board the schooner, was occupied in changing her appearance as much as possible; for we knew that the Spaniards have no lack of spies either in Jamaica or the other English islands, and we misdoubted that an account of the schooner had been sent to Cuba, and from thence to the Main. We, therefore, repainted the ship, making a great yellow streak from stem to stern, with false ports, and also made a shift to alter, to the eye at least, the trim of the ship, by placing false bulwarks