CRUSOE AND THE MUTINEERS. 329

After these ceremonies past, and after all his good things were
brought into my little apartment, we began to consult what was
to be done with the prisoners we had ; for it was worth considering
whether we might venture to take them away with us or no, espe-
cially two of them, whom we knew to be incorrigible and refractory
to the last degree; and the captain said, he knew they were such
rogues that there was no obliging them, and if he did carry them
away it must be in irons as malefactors to be delivered over to
justice at the first English colony he could come at. And I found
that the captain himself was very anxious about it.

Upon this, I told him that if he desired it I durst undertake to
bring the two men he spoke of to make it their own request that
he should leave them upon the island. “TI should be very glad of
that,” says the captain, “ with all my heart.”

“ Well,” says I, “I will send for them up, and talk with them for
you.” So I caused Friday and the two hostages—for they were
now discharged, their comrades having performed their promise ;
I say, I caused them to go to the cave, and bring up the five men,
pinioned as they were, to the bower, and keep them there till I
came.

After some time I came thither dressed in my new habit; and
now I was called governor again. Being all met, and the captain
with me, I caused the men to be brought before me; and I told
them I had had a full account of their villanous behaviour to the
captain, and how they had run away with the ship, and were pre-
paring to commit further robberies, but that Providence had en-
snared them in their own ways, and that they were fallen into the
pit which they had digged for others.

IT let them know that by my direction the ship had been seized,
that she lay now in the road; and they might see by-and-by that
their new captain had received the reward of his villany, for that
they might see him hanging at the yard-arm.

That as to them, I wanted to know what they had to say why
T should not execute them as pirates taken in the fact, as by my
commission they could not doubt I had authority to do.

One of them answered in the name of the rest, that they had
nothing to say but this, that when they were taken the captain