Indeed, he was no such a man--only, as I whispered to him, he must, if still he believed in his Geomancer, be very sharp. He would be in his thirty-seventh year by the time he set foot on English ground again. "Ay, ay," says he, while he took a great drink from his cup and passed it to me, "and so I shall, But before the thirty-seventh year is gone, I shall be back again--and you shall be with me, Nick, an' you will." For myself 'twas very easy to say I would come. If James was king now, then he would have for officers of his ships all those who had served him when he was a sailor, and never had I been one of those. Moreover, I had no interest with either Edward Russell--who is now as I write Earl of Orford--or with Rooke, both of whom were like to be the King's great seamen; so that there was little enough likelihood that I should get another ship. There were just now hundreds of worthy sailors waiting for appointments, and I had no better chance than, if as good as, they. Also was I gone my time, having been now at sea since 1656, when I went a boy of eight, so that I was nigh forty years of age, and was never like now to be a captain, being but a plain sailor and no gentleman courtier or page of honour. Had I been that and not known the maintruck from the keel, then, perhaps, might I have gotten a ship at twenty. But enough of this, only I had a mind to come out with Phips if he came again as an adventurer; and that we should see when we got home. A week later we had wooded and watered from our isle, and the wind being fair away we went, while the last piece of counsel we received came from the beastly great negro of whom I have writ before. This creature's name was Juan, he having been born at San Domingo city, a Spanish slave, which he no longer was, and as we had always thought, though we were never convinced thereof, had egged on Brooks and the others to mutiny by telling of them that we were a-fishing in the wrong pool--as anglers at home say--but that if they could take the frigate from Phips, whom he hated, he could show them where the plate really was. So now he shouted to us from his periaga, as 'tis called there, "_Adios, Don Phipo, adios_. Berry sorie, Massa, you no find platy, but you look not in proper place. You ever come back again, which not berry like, you send for Juan and pay him better, he show you many tings if he not show it someone else firsty. _Adios, Don Phipo, adios cada uno_, I hope you berry nice cruise to Englishy waters. _Adios_," and with that he hoisted his little sail and was gone. Phips scowled at him first and then burst out a-laughing, while one of the sailors flung a musket ball at him, and so we sailed away disappointed men.