Amongst the crew of the vessel commanded by the Dutchman, Captain Yanky—one of the piratical commanders with whom Dampier was associated after crossing the Isthmus—there had been a quartermaster named John Cooke, a Creole. On Yanky capturing a Spanish prize, Cooke, by virtue of his position according to the practice of the buccaneers, claimed and obtained command of her. But the privateersmen were of mixed nationalities, and the French, growing jealous of the Englishmen, plundered and stripped the men who had been their shipmates and companions-in-arms, and turned them naked ashore. Captain Tristian, however, whose ship, it will be remembered, Dampier and his comrades boarded on the Darien coast, took pity upon the English, and carried ten of them, one of whom was Cooke, to the Island of Tortuga. Whilst they lay there at anchor the English rose, seized Tristian's vessel, and sailing away with her made two captures of importance, one of which they navigated to Virginia, where they arrived in April, 1683. Having sold the cargo of this prize they fitted her out as a privateer, mounting her, Captain Cowley says in his _Voyage_, with eight guns, though Dampier makes the number eighteen. They called her the _Revenge_. Dampier with many others volunteered to sign articles for her, and when she set sail her crew, according to Cowley, consisted of fifty-two, but according to Dampier of seventy men. The voyage of the _Revenge_ was written by Cowley as well as by Dampier—that is to say, a large portion of this voyage is included in Dampier's first volume of his Travels. Cowley's account is very full, wanting indeed the flavour of Dampier's style, and the vitality and archness of his descriptive powers; but in one sense Cowley is more interesting than the other—I mean, that as a freebooter he writes with far more candour than Dampier, whose narratives everywhere repeat by implication the direct apology he makes in the preface to his first volume: “As for the Actions of the Company, among whom I made the greatest part of this voyage, a Thread of which I have carried on thro' it, 'tis not to divert the Reader with them that I mention them, much less that I take any pleasure in relating them: but for method's sake and for the Reader's satisfaction; who could not so well acquiesce in my Description of Places, etc., without knowing the particular Traverses I made among them: nor in these, without an Account of the Concomitant Circumstances. Besides that, I would not prejudice the truth and sincerity of my Relation, tho' by omissions only. And as for the Traverses themselves, they make for the Reader's advantage; however little for mine, since thereby I have been the better inabled to gratify his Curiosity; as one who rambles about a Country can give usually a better account of it, than a Carrier who jogs on to his Inn, without ever going out of his Road.”