_And I do now_, said he, _declare such war, and, at the same time, recommend to you, my comrades, a humane and generous behaviour, towards your prisoners; which will appear by so much more the effects of a noble soul, as we are satisfied we should not meet the same treatment should our ill fortune, or more properly our disunion, or want of courage, give us up to their mercy_. After this, he required a muster should be made, and there were able hands two hundred, and thirty-five sick and wounded. As they were mustered, they were sworn. After affairs were thus settled, they shaped their course for the Spanish West-Indies, but resolved in the way, to take a week or ten days’ cruise in the windward passage from Jamaica, because most merchantmen, which were good sailers, and did not stay for convoy, took this as the shorter cut for England. Off St. Christopher’s they took an English sloop becalmed, with their boats. They took out of her a couple of puncheons of rum, and half a dozen hogsheads of sugar. She was a New-England sloop, bound for Boston, and without offering the least violence to the men, or stripping them, they let her go. The master of the sloop was Thomas Butler, who owned he never met with so candid an enemy as the French man of war, which took him the day he left St. Christophers. They met with no other booty in their way, till they came upon their station, when after three days, they saw a sloop which had the impudence to give them chase. Capt. Misson asked what could be the meaning of the sloop standing for them? One of the men who was acquainted with the West-Indies, told him, it was a Jamaica privateer, and he should not wonder, if he clapped him aboard. “I am,” said he, “no stranger to their way of working, and this despicable fellow, as those who don’t know a Jamaica privateer may think him, it is ten to one will give you some trouble. It now grows towards evening, and you’ll find as soon as he has discovered your force, he’ll keep out of the reach of your guns till the 12 o’clock watch is changed at night, and he’ll then attempt to clap you aboard, with hopes to carry you in the hurry: wherefore, captain, if you will give me leave to advise you, let every man have his small arms; and at 12, let the bell ring as usual, and rather more noise than ordinary be made, as if the one watch was turning in, and the other out, in a confusion and hurry, and I’ll engage he will venture to enter his men.” The fellow’s advice was approved and resolved upon, and the sloop worked as he said she would; for upon coming near enough to make out distinctly the force of the Victoire, on her throwing out French colours, she, the sloop, clapped upon a wind, and the Victoire gave chase, but without hopes of gaining upon her; she went so well to windward, that she could spare the ship some points in her sheet, and yet wrong her: at dusk of the evening, the French had lost sight of her, but about 11 at night, they