260 THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES

 

 

tain, the commander calls for you ;” and presently the captain replied,
“Tell his excellency I am just a-coming.” This more perfectly amused
them; and they all believed that the commander was just by with his
fifty men.

Upon the captain’s coming to me, I told him my project for seizing
the ship, which he liked wonderfully well, and resolved to put it in
execution the next morning.

But in order to execute it with more art, and to be secure of success,
I told him we must divide the prisoners, and that he should go and
take Atkins, and two more of the worst of them, and send them
pinioned to the cave where the others lay: this was committed to Fri-
day, and the two men who came on shore with the captain.

They conveyed them to the cave, as to a prison; and it was, indeed,
a dismal place, especially to men in their condition.

The others I ordered to my bower, as I called it, of which I have
given a full description; and as it was fenced in, and they pinioned,
the place was secure enough, considering they were upon their beha-
viour.

To these, in the morning, I sent the captain, who was to enter into
a parley with them: in a word, to try them, and tell me, whether he
thought they might be trusted or no, to go on board and surprise the
ship. He talked to them of the injury done him, of the condition
they were brought to; and that though the governor had given them
quarter for their lives, as to the present action, yet that if they were
sent to England, they would all be hanged in chains, to be sure; but
that if they would join in such an attempt as to recover the ship, he
would have the governor’s engagement for their pardon. :

Any one may guess how readily such a proposal would be accepted
by men in their condition: they fell down on their knees to the cap-
tam, and promised, with the deepest imprecations, that they would be
faithful to him to the last drop, and that they should owe their lives
to him, and would go with him all over the world; that they would
own him for a father to them as long as they lived.

“Well,” says the captain, “I'must go and tell the governor what
you say, and see what I can do to bring him to consent to it.” So he
brougkt me an account of the temper he found them in; and that he
verily believed they would be faithful.

However, that we might be very secure, I told him he should go
back again, and choose out five of them, and tell them, that they
should see that they did not want men; but he would take out those
five to be his assistants, and that the governor would keep the other
two, and the thy e that were sent prisoners to the castle (my cave), as