They were, however, getting very sick of the cruise, and contemplated surrendering themselves at Panama; but meanwhile they took another vessel, the _Conception_--the doubt which existed as to the establishment of peace not troubling them very much--and eventually, abandoning the idea of surrender, they sailed for China. Shelvocke had some queer and suspicious dealings with the Chinese authorities at Whampoa, disposing of his ship for £700, after having, as he alleges, paid more than £2,000 for port dues. Betagh says he cleared some £7,000 out of the cruise, and he gives figures which go far towards proving his assertion; the owners did not make much out of the venture, though Clipperton endeavoured to act honestly towards them; and when Shelvocke, returning in an East Indiaman, presented himself before them, he was immediately arrested--Betagh says on the strength of a letter which he had written while a prisoner at Lima--and put in prison. He was charged with two acts of piracy--to wit, the affair off Cape Frio, and the capture of the _Santa Familia_; but there was not adequate legal proof against him. On the further charge of defrauding his owners he was detained, but contrived to escape, and left England. This was in 1722. Four years later he published his book, "A Voyage Round the World," which was followed in two years by that of his late officer, William Betagh. Making every allowance for Betagh's animosity, it is impossible to believe that Shelvocke was a favourable specimen of a privateer commander; his own admissions are in several instances against him, and there can be little doubt that he and his crew degenerated into unscrupulous pirates. Clipperton, though very rough and eventually a drunkard, was a better type of man; and, had Shelvocke been loyal, and stuck to him from the first, the story of the cruise might have been a very different one. SOME ODD YARNS CHAPTER VII CAPTAIN PHILLIPS OF THE "ALEXANDER" In the year 1744 a British 20-gun ship, the _Solebay_, was captured, together with two others, by a French squadron under Admiral de Rochambeau. Less than two years later the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty called before them a certain Captain Phillips, master mariner, commanding the _Alexander_ privateer; and the following is the "minute" of the interview, officially recorded: