Upon this I took occasion to put in my vote again. "Why," said I, "do we talk of being killed by the Arabs, or made slaves of by the Turks? Are we not able to board almost any vessel we shall meet with in those seas; and, instead of their taking us, we to take them?" "Well done, pirate," said the gunner (he that had looked in my hand, and told me I should come to the gallows), "I'll say that for him," says he, "he always looks the same way. But I think, of my conscience, it is our only way now." "Don't tell me," says I, "of being a pirate; we must be pirates, or anything, to get fairly out of this cursed place." In a word, they concluded all, by my advice, that our business was to cruise for anything we could see. "Why then," said I to them, "our first business is to see if the people upon this island have no navigation, and what boats they use; and, if they have any better or bigger than ours, let us take one of them." First, indeed, all our aim was to get, if possible, a boat with a deck and a sail; for then we might have saved our provisions, which otherwise we could not. We had, to our great good fortune, one sailor among us, who had been assistant to the cook; he told us, that he would find a way how to preserve our beef without cask or pickle; and this he did effectually by curing it in the sun, with the help of saltpetre, of which there was great plenty in the island; so that, before we found any method for our escape, we had dried the flesh of six or seven cows and bullocks, and ten or twelve goats, and it relished so well, that we never gave ourselves the trouble to boil it when we ate it, but either broiled it or ate it dry. But our main difficulty about fresh water still remained; for we had no vessel to put any into, much less to keep any for our going to sea. But our first voyage being only to coast the island, we resolved to venture, whatever the hazard or consequence of it might be, and in order to preserve as much fresh water as we could, our carpenter made a well athwart the middle of one of our canoes, which he separated from the other parts of the canoe, so as to make it tight to hold the water and covered so as we might step upon it; and this was so large that it held near a hogshead of water very well. I cannot better describe this well than by the same kind which the small fishing-boats in England have to preserve their fish alive in; only that this, instead of having holes to let the salt water in, was made sound every way to keep it out; and it was the first invention, I believe, of its kind for such an use; but necessity is a spur to ingenuity and the mother of invention.