Dampier and his companions sailed away from north-west Australia to the Cocos or Coconut Islands in the Indian Ocean, which long afterwards were settled by enterprising Scotsmen, and have become a British possession of some little value. From the Cocos Islands they made their way back to Sumatra and the mainland of Indo-China. By this time he had become thoroughly sick of the buccaneers and their piratical ways, and, after making one or two vain attempts to escape, he, with two companions, extorted an unwilling permission from Captain Read to be left behind on the Nicobar Islands (between Sumatra and the Andamans). One of the seamen who rowed them ashore out of kindliness stole an axe and gave it to the party of three Englishmen, "knowing it was a good commodity with the Indians".[58] [58] The after career of the _Cygnet_ and her crew, with her two captains, Read and Teat, was sufficiently remarkable to be briefly sketched. Some more of her men left her at the Philippines and entered the Royal Navy, wherein at least one of them rose to a very honourable command. Captain Teat, and thirty to forty stout seamen, quitted the _Cygnet_ on the Coromandel coast and made their way to Agra, where they entered the bodyguard of the Mughal emperor. Read, joined by some more adventurers, took the _Cygnet_, over to Madagaskar, where, in alliance with a Sakalava chief, he played the pirate successfully. Wearying of this, he and some of his men turned slavers, and joined a ship which had come from New York to convey slaves from Madagaskar and East Africa to America. Read and his men went to New York, and quite possibly became the ancestors of excellent citizens of the United States. Other adventurers then proposed patching up the old _Cygnet_, whose bottom was honeycombed with the attacks of the Teredo boring worm, and sailing her back to England. They were obliged, however, to abandon her in St. Augustine's Bay (Southern Madagaskar), where she foundered.