After their stay at the Galapagos Islands Captain John Cook died, and his place was taken by a commander named Davis. Two other English buccaneering ships had joined Dampier's vessel at the Galapagos, and the adventurers spent months which became years in various piratical adventures up and down the west coast of Central and South America from California to Peru. At last a Captain Swan, to whose ship the _Cygnet_ Dampier had transferred himself on 25 August, 1685, decided, probably on Dampier's advice, to return to England by way of the East Indies. Accordingly they steered right across the Pacific from Cape Corrientes on the coast of Mexico to Guam in the Ladrone Islands, a passage in which they had been preceded by Francis Drake in 1580 and Sir Thomas Cavendish in 1588. Of course the terrors of this voyage across some seven thousand miles of sea was diminished by this time owing to the frequent passages made by the Spanish ships between Mexico and the Philippine Islands. Apparently this somewhat northern track across the tropical regions of the Pacific Ocean was relatively free from violent tempests, and at the right season of the year provided with continuously favourable winds in one direction or the other. At any rate, the two ships of the expedition, under Captain Swan and Captain Teat (Dampier being with Swan), set out from Cape Corrientes on 31 March, 1686, and reached Guam on 21 May with only three days' provisions left for the ships' crews. The somewhat strict allowance of food and drink on which all were placed was thought by Dampier to have cured him of a dropsy from which he was suffering at the time of his departure from Cape Corrientes. Their sustenance consisted of ten spoonfuls of boiled Indian corn a day, together with a little water for those who were thirsty; but Dampier noticed that some of the seamen did not drink for nine or ten days at a time, and one man went without any liquid for seventeen days, declaring he was not thirsty. For such as these the moisture in the boiled maize seems to have sufficed. But the men had grimly resolved that they would not long grow hungry if Captain Swan's estimate was at fault. It had been decided that, as soon as victuals failed, Captain Swan should be killed and eaten! [Illustration: AUSTRALASIA on Mercator's Projection]