The second failure to take a prize made the unsteady crew discontented, and several of them stole the best boat and ran away with it. Mutiny was forestalled by an encounter with a Spanish vessel called the _Jesus Maria_ in the roadstead of Pisco. Preparations were made to carry her by storm, as Captain Shelvocke concluded that she would suit his requirements very nicely and his bark was unfit to keep the sea any longer. The _Recovery_ was jammed alongside after one blast of scrap-iron and other junk from the prostrate cannon, and the boarders tumbled over the bulwarks, armed with the three cutlasses and such muskets as could be fired. The Spanish captain and his officers had no stomach to resist such stubborn visitors as these. Doffing their hats, they bowed low and asked for quarter, which Captain Shelvocke was graciously pleased to grant. The _Jesus Maria_ was found to be laden with pitch, tar, copper, and plank, and her captain offered to ransom her for sixteen thousand dollars. Captain Shelvocke needed the ship more than he did the money, so he transferred his crew to the stout _Jesus Maria_ and bundled the Spaniards into the _Recovery_ and wished them the best of luck. The shipwreck at Juan Fernandez and all the other misfortunes were forgotten. The adventurers were in as good a ship as the lost _Speedwell_ and needed only more guns to make a first-class fighting privateer of her. They now carried out the original intention of cruising to Mexico, and in those waters captured a larger ship, the _Sacra Familia_ of six guns and seventy men. Again Captain Shelvocke shifted his flag and left the _Jesus Maria_ to his prisoners. On board of his next capture, the _Holy Sacrament_, he placed a prize crew, but the Spanish sailors rose and killed all the Englishmen, and the number of those who had sailed from England in the _Speedwell_ was now reduced to twenty-six. Off the coast of California sickness raged among them until only six or seven sailors were fit for duty. Then Captain Shelvocke did the boldest thing of his career, sailing the _Holy Sacrament_ all the way across the Pacific until he reached the China coast and found refuge in the harbor of Macao. Then this short-handed crew worked the battered ship to Canton, where the captains of the East Indiamen expressed their amazement at the ragged sails, the feeble, sea-worn men, and the voyage they had made. Captain George Shelvocke by this feat alone enrolled himself among the great navigators of the eighteenth century. He had found no Spanish galleons to plunder, and his adventure was a failure, but as a master of men and circumstances he had won a singular success.