Five days passed in this manner, the refugees hardly able to get an hour's rest for the baling and continual fear that the boat would sink if left alone. On the sixth morning they saw Margarita, but could not land on account of the rocky shore, which nearly wrecked them on their making the attempt. Sheering off, they next day sighted Saltatudos island, one of the Dry Tortugas, where they met a boat manned with privateers, who treated them very kindly, and wanted them to join their company. To this, however, Pitman and his companions would not agree, and this annoyed the privateers, who burnt their boat and virtually kept them as prisoners. When they went on a cruise the refugees were left in charge of four men, and had much ado to find enough turtle to keep them from starving. After remaining here for three months an English privateer arrived, and, at their request, took them on to New Providence, to which the inhabitants had just returned after being driven off by Spaniards. Pitman at last got to Amsterdam, and from thence to England, where the revolution had just taken place, and his friends had succeeded in obtaining a free pardon. The white bond-servant, being under a short engagement, was generally worked to his utmost capacity. No matter if he died before the end of his term as long as he paid for the expense incurred. But Englishmen were no more inclined to be slaves then than they are now, and the planters of St. Kitt's found them so troublesome to manage that they soon became afraid of buying, and showed a preference for negroes. Some of the English servants committed suicide, and it is recorded that a pious master told one of them, who had expressed his intention of destroying himself, that he trusted that God would give him more grace, than, for a short term of trouble in this life, to precipitate himself into hell.