We were considering what to do with her, when William came to me. "Hark
thee, friend," says he, "thou hast made a fine piece of work of it
now, hast thou not, to borrow thy neighbour's ship here just at thy
neighbour's door, and never ask him leave? Now, dost thou not think
there are some men-of-war in the port? Thou hast given them the alarm
sufficiently; thou wilt have them upon thy back before night, depend
upon it, to ask thee wherefore thou didst so."
"Truly, William," said I, "for aught I know, that may be true; what,
then, shall we do next?" Says he, "Thou hast but two things to do:
either to go in and take all the rest, or else get thee gone before they
come out and take thee; for I see they are hoisting a topmast to yon
great ship, in order to put to sea immediately, and they won't be long
before they come to talk with thee, and what wilt thou say to them when
they ask thee why thou borrowedst their ship without leave?"
As William said, so it was. We could see by our glasses they were all
in a hurry, manning and fitting some sloops they had there, and a large
man-of-war, and it was plain they would soon be with us. But we were
not at a loss what to do; we found the ship we had taken was laden with
nothing considerable for our purpose, except some cocoa, some sugar, and
twenty barrels of flour; the rest of her cargo was hides; so we took
out all we thought fit for our turn, and, among the rest, all her
ammunition, great shot, and small-arms, and turned her off. We also took
a cable and three anchors she had, which were for our purpose, and some
of her sails. She had enough left just to carry her into port, and that
was all.
Having done this, we stood on upon the Brazil coast, southward, till we
came to the mouth of the river Janeiro. But as we had two days the wind
blowing hard at S.E. and S.S.E., we were obliged to come to an anchor
under a little island, and wait for a wind. In this time the Portuguese
had, it seems, given notice over land to the governor there, that a
pirate was upon the coast; so that, when we came in view of the port, we
saw two men-of-war riding just without the bar, whereof one, we found,
was getting under sail with all possible speed, having slipped her
cable on purpose to speak with us; the other was not so forward, but was
preparing to follow. In less than an hour they stood both fair after us,
with all the sail they could make.
Had not the night come on, William's words had been made good; they
would certainly have asked us the question what we did there, for we
found the foremost ship gained upon us, especially upon one tack, for we
plied away from them to windward; but in the dark losing sight of them,
we resolved to change our course and stand away directly for sea, not
doubting that we should lose them in the night.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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