“One of the members of the expedition was a man named Dampier,” replied his father. “He was the son of an English farmer and at seventeen was apprenticed as a boy aboard a merchant ship sailing to the West Indies. Deserting the ship, he tried his fortunes as a logwood cutter, but finding this held little chance for either riches or excitement, he joined the buccaneers. But Dampier was at heart a naturalist and an author. He was fond of study, was a keen observer and wherever he went he invariably wrote notes recording all he had seen and made excellent maps and sketches. One would hardly expect the career of a buccaneer to favor literary work and yet Dampier managed to write an excellent book while on a buccaneer ship. Often he would be obliged to drop pen and paper in the middle of a chapter in order to help his comrades battle with a Spanish ship or take a town, but he kept it up with fanatical persistence, carried his manuscript and his writing materials with him wherever he went and left most valuable records. What a queer picture he must have presented as he sat on a gun carriage busily jotting down notes on natural history or making sketches of the rugged wooded shores of some buccaneers’ lair, which he always speaks of as ‘a particular draught of my own composure,’ while, beside his ink horn, was his loaded pistol and his trusty cutlass ready for any emergency. His copy he kept in a joint of bamboo, which, he says, ‘I stopt at both ends, closing it with Wax so as to keep out any water. In this way I preserved my Journal and other writings from being wet, tho’ I was often forced to swim.’ “And along with the author-naturalist, Dampier, was many another odd character. There was Foster, who spent his hours between battles composing sentimental poetry and who wrote ‘Soneyettes of Love’ aboard a buccaneer ship; Richard Jobson, a divinity student and chemist, who carried along with his sword and pistols a well-thumbed Greek Testament which he translated aloud for the edification of his piratical mates, and, lastly, Ringrose, the pilot and navigator, whose carefully kept log has given us the true history of this ‘most dangerous voyage and bold assaults of Captain Bartholomew Sharp.’” CHAPTER VIII A PERILOUS UNDERTAKING