A NOVEL ADVENTURE, 423

was to signify that the next morning at sun-rising they would
bring some for them; and accordingly the next morning they brought
down five women and eleven men, and gave them to the English-
men to carry with them on their voyage, just as we would bring
so many cows and oxen down to a seaport town, to victual a ship.

As brutish and barbarous as these fellows were at home, their
stomachs turned at this sight, and they did not know what to do;
to refuse the prisoners would have been the highest affront to the
savage gentry that offered them; and what to do with them they
knew not. However, upon some debates, they resolved to accept
of them; and in return they gave the savages that brought’them
one of their hatchets, an old key, a knife, and six or seven of their
bullets, which, though they did not understand, they seemed °
extremely pleased with. And then tying the poor creatures’ hands
behind them, they (the people) dragged the poor prisoners into the
boat for our men.

The Englishmen were obliged to come away as soon as they had
them, or else they that gave them this noble present would cer-
tainly have expected that they should have gone to work with
them, have killed two or three of them the next morning, and
perhaps have invited the donors to dinner.

But having taken their leave with all the respects and thanks
that could well pass between people where on either side. they
understood not one word they could say, they put off with their
boat, and came back towards the first island, where, when they
arrived, they set eight of their prisoners at liberty, there being too
many of them for their occasion.

In their voyage, they endeavoured to have some communication
with their prisoners, but it was impossible to make them under-
stand anything; nothing they could say to them, or give them, or do
for them, but was looked upon as going about to murder them. They
first of all unbound them; but the poor creatures screamed at that,
especially the women, as if they had just felt the knife at their
throats, for they immediately concluded they were unbound on
purpose to be killed.

If they gave them anything to eat, it was the same thing; then
they concluded it was for fear they should sink in flesh, and so not