A few weeks later the band of nomad Indians was joined by other parties, and together, with a train of fifteen hundred horses, they moved by easy stages far inland, almost a thousand miles from the coast, and came in four months’ time to the capital, or chief town of the tribe, where the king claimed the seamen as his own property. He spoke a little Spanish, and hated the Spaniards so cordially that his friendly regard was offered these wanderers because they had served in an English man-of-war of a squadron sent against the enemy. They were slaves, it is true, but this condition was tempered with kindness, and for eight months they lived and labored among these wild horsemen of South America. When the season of spring arrived, the tribe broke camp for the long pilgrimage to the pampas and the chase of the wild horses which supplied food and raiment. The customary route to the sea passed within a hundred miles of Buenos Aires, and the sailors persuaded their masters that it was worth while trying to obtain ransom for them. At last there was a tangible hope of extricating themselves, but it brought joy only to three of the four comrades. Poor John Duck happened to be a mulatto born in London, and his brown skin won the fancy of the Indians, who insisted that he was of their own blood. Therefore they refused to part with him and he was sold for a very high price to another chief in a region even more remote, and this was the last of him. His three shipmates were very sorrowful at leaving him, no doubt, and it must have been an incident deeply moving when they shook hands and went their opposite ways, for they had suffered manifold things together and carried it off magnificently. And in their minds there must have been the memory of that vow they had sworn together “never to quit each other unless compelled by a superior force.” The chief was faithful to his word in sending a messenger to Buenos Aires, where the Spanish governor expressed his willingness to buy three English prisoners at the bargain price of ninety dollars for the lot. In this manner were Midshipman Morris and Samuel Cooper and John Andrews delivered from their captivity in the wilds of Patagonia, though they were not yet to see the long road home to England. The Spanish governor of Buenos Aires behaved toward them like a very courteous gentleman, but felt it his bounden duty to labor with them for the good of their souls. “He sent for us several times,” Midshipman Morris tells us, “and earnestly urged us to turn Catholics and serve the king of Spain; to which we answered that we were Protestants and true Englishmen and hoped to die so. Many tempting offers were made to seduce us but, thank God, we resisted them all.”