When he had for about a fortnight exercised his head and hands at this work, we tried the effect of his ingenuity; and, having another meeting with the natives, were surprised to see the folly of the poor people. For a little bit of silver cut in the shape of a bird, we had two cows, and, which was our loss, if it had been in brass, it had been still of more value. For one of the bracelets made of chain-work, we had as much provision of several sorts, as would fairly have been worth, in England, fifteen or sixteen pounds; and so of all the rest. Thus, that which when it was in coin was not worth sixpence to us, when thus converted into toys and trifles, was worth a hundred times its real value, and purchased for us anything we had occasion for. In this condition we lived upwards of a year, but all of us began to be very much tired of it, and, whatever came of it, resolved to attempt an escape. We had furnished ourselves with no less than three very good canoes; and as the monsoons, or trade-winds, generally affect that country, blowing in most parts of this island one six months of a year one way, and the other six months another way, we concluded we might be able to bear the sea well enough. But always, when we came to look into it, the want of fresh water was the thing that put us off from such an adventure, for it is a prodigious length, and what no man on earth could be able to perform without water to drink. Being thus prevailed upon by our own reason to set the thoughts of that voyage aside, we had then but two things before us; one was, to put to sea the other way; viz., west, and go away for the Cape of Good Hope, where, first or last, we should meet with some of our own country ships, or else to put for the mainland of Africa, and either travel by land, or sail along the coast towards the Red Sea, where we should, first or last, find a ship of some nation or other, that would take us up; or perhaps we might take them up, which, by-the-bye, was the thing that always ran in my head. It was our ingenious cutler, whom ever after we called silversmith, that proposed this; but the gunner told him, that he had been in the Red Sea in a Malabar sloop, and he knew this, that if we went into the Red Sea, we should either be killed by the wild Arabs, or taken and made slaves of by the Turks; and therefore he was not for going that way.