882 SPEAKING A BRISTOL TRADER.

in no passengers for fear of wanting provisions for the voyage, as
well for themselves as for those. they should take in; so we were
obliged to goon. It was about a week after this that we made
the Banks of Newfoundland, where, to shorten my story, we put
all our French people on board a bark, which they hired at sea
there, to put them on shore, and afterward to carry them to France,
if they could get provisions to victual themselves with. When I
say all the French went on shore, I should remember that the
young priest I spoke of, hearing we were bound to the Hast Indies,
desired to go the voyage with us, and to be set on shore on the
coast of Coromandel, which I readily agreed to, for I wonderfully
liked the man, and had very good reason, as will appear afterward;
also four of the seamen entered themselves on our ship, and proved
very useful fellows.

From hence we directed our course to the West Indies, steering
away south and south by east for about twenty days together,
sometimes little or no wind at all, when we met with another
subject for our humanity to work upon, almost as deplorable as
that before.

It was in the latitude of 27° 5’ north, and the 19th day of
March 1694-5, when we espied a sail, our course south-east and by
south. We soon perceived it was a large vessel, and that she bore
up to us, but could not at first know what to make of her, till
after coming a little nearer we found she had lost her maintop-
mast, fore-mast, and boltsprit; and presently she fired a gun asa
signal of distress. The weather was pretty good, wind at north-
north-west, a fresh gale; and we soon came to speak with her.

We found her a ship of Bristol, bound home from Barbadses,
but had been blown out of the road at Barbadoes a few days before
she was ready to sail by a terrible hurricane, while the captain
and chief mate were both gone on shore; so that, besides the terror
of the storm, they were but in an indifferent case for good artists
to bring the ship home. They had been already nine weeks at
sea, and had met with another terrible storm after the hurricane
was over, which had blown them quite out of their knowledge to
the westward, and in which they lost their mast, as above. They
told us they expected to have seen the Bahama Islands, but were