His adventures from the date of his leaving Mr. Hobby down to the month of April 1681 he dismisses in a couple of pages. Ringrose, however, has written very fully of the expedition in which Dampier apparently served as a foremast hand, and to the pages of his work it is necessary to turn to obtain the information which Dampier omits.[7] The fleet of the privateers consisted of nine vessels; the largest of them, commanded by Captain Harris, was of the burden of one hundred and fifty tons, mounted twenty-five guns, and carried one hundred and seven men; whilst the smallest, commanded by Captain Macket, was of fourteen tons, her crew consisting of twenty men. They sailed on March 23rd, 1679, for the province of Darien, their designs being, as Ringrose candidly admits, to pillage and plunder in those parts. But they do not appear to have arrived off the coast until April 1680, this being the date given by Ringrose, who says that there they landed three hundred and thirty-one men, leaving a party of sailors behind them to guard their ships. They marched in companies; Captain Bartholomew Sharp's (in whose troop, I take it, was Dampier) carried a red flag, with a bunch of white and green ribands; Captain Richard Sawkins's company exhibited a red flag striped with yellow; the third and fourth, commanded by Captain Peter Harris, bore two cream-coloured flags; the fifth and sixth a red flag each; and the seventh a red colour with yellow stripes, and a hand and sword thereon by way of a device. “All or most of them,” adds Ringrose, “were armed with Fuzee, Pistol, and Hanger.” This is a description that brings the picture before us. We see these troops of sailors carrying banners, dressed as merchant seamen always were, and still are, in twenty different costumes, lurching along under the broiling equatorial sun, through forests, rivers, and bogs, trusting to luck for a drink of water, and with no better victuals than cakes of bread (four to a man), called by Ringrose “dough-boys,” a name that survives to this day, animated to the support of the most extraordinary fatigues, the most venomous country, and the deadliest climate in the world, by dreams of more gold than they would be able to carry away with them.