As we came to this port we were at a loss to know the kind of welcome that might wait us; so when we anchored we held a consult, and one who was a clerk drafted a letter to the governor of this Providence Island, setting out that we desired to come into the town, find anchorage and have the liberties of the place, for which the men would present the governor with twenty pieces-of-eight and two pieces of gold, all told, and Mr. Every, because he had a double share, offered for himself forty pieces-of-eight and four gold coins. One Adams was our ambassador, who with a few of our men to form a sort of honor guard went ashore, while we lay by waiting the result. Our messengers soon came back with a letter from the governor, saying that we were welcome and could come and go again when we pleased. Thus for sixty pieces of silver and six pieces of gold we bought the keys of the town. Here the adventure so wickedly begun at the Groyne ended. Most of our people scattered themselves about these West Indies, where they found great hospitality for pirates, particularly at this New Providence, which rivaled Madagascar for folk of this complexion. Mr. Every made a great friend of the island governor and gave all the promise in the world of becoming one of the leading malefactors of this region. Here he found the things he liked, for from these parts real navies of buccaneers set out to harry the Main itself, the American provinces,--everywhere, even, as I had seen, over to the far shores of Africa and India. As for me, with the money I had from the _Gunsway_ I bought passage on a ship going to the Virginia plantations. “Farewell, wicked ship and wicked men,” thought I as the Virginia vessel passed by the _Charles the Second_ at her moorings. “Farewell,” said I, gazing at the empty decks on which the sun lay white and hot; “good riddance, and may you be quickly entombed in the deep waters.” Had I been a moral philosopher and not a mere sailorman I would have profited by my reflections. Would that I had tarried in Virginia, where there is much to a man’s liking! But no, I longed to be at home and out of the sun; I longed for the cool vales of Somerset and the sweet evening air which from the Mendips blows the blue peat smoke about the thatched roofs of simple cottages; I longed for quietness and rest, and these honest longings drove me afoul of the cruel courts of justice. I was still miserably weak when I crawled at length from the docks at Bristol up into the town. I lay a week in bed at a tavern in the High Street, afflicted with a return of the dry bellyache. I felt danger to be about me; for all England over there was little talk but of the notorious Captain Every; no exaggeration of his crimes being too great or untrue to go down the gullets of the staring people. Behind it all was the East India Company, as well as the Mogul rulers, who dinned continually at the British Government for the punishment and extermination of pirates.