322 TILE CAPTAIN AND HIS MEN.

first mutinied, and used him.barbarously, in tying his hands, and
giving him injurious language. However, the captain told him he
must lay down his arms at discretion, and trust to the governor’s
mercy; by which he meant me, for they all called me governor.

In a word, they all laid down their arms, and begged their
lives; and I sent the man that had parleyed with them, and two
more, who bound them all; and then my great army of fifty men,
which particularly with those three, were all but eight, came up
and seized upon them all, and upon their boat—only that I kept
myself and one more out of sight, for reasons of state.

Our next work was to repair the boat, and think of seizing the
ship; and as for the captain, now he had leisure to parley with
them, he expostulated with them upon the villany of their prac-
tices with him, and at length upon the further wickedness of their
design, and how certainly it must bring them to misery and dis-
tress in the end, and perhaps to the gallows.

They all appeared very penitent, and begged hard for their
lives. As for that, he told them, they were none of his prisoners, but
the commander of the island: that they thought they had set him
on shore in a barren uninhabited island, but it had pleased God so
to direct them, that the island was inhabited, and that the governor
was an Englishman: that he might hang them all there if he
pleased; but as he had given them all quarter, he supposed he
would send them to England to be dealt with there, as justice re-
quired —except Atkins, whom he was commanded by the governor
to advise to prepare for death, for that he would be hanged in
the morning:

Though this was all a fiction of his own, yet it had its desired
effect. Atkins fell upon his knees to beg the captain to intercede
with the governor for his life; and all the rest begged of him for
God’s sake that they might not be sent to England.

It now occurred to me that the time of our deliverance was
come, and that it would be a most easy thing to bring these fellows
in to be hearty in getting possession of the ship; so I retired in
the dark from them, that they might not see what kind of a
governor they had, and called the captain tome. When I called,
as at a good distance, one of the men was ordered to speak again,