THE VOYAGE RESUMED. 533

left him where they found him; only took him down from the tree
where he was hanged by one hand.

However just our men thought this action, I was against them
in it; and I always after that time told them God would blast the
voyage, for I looked upon all the blood they shed that night to be
murder in them. For though it is true that they had killed
Thomas Jeffery, yet it was as true that Jeffery was the aggressor,
had broken the truce, and had violated or debauched a young
woman of theirs who came down to them innocently, and on the
faith of their public capitulation.

The boatswain defended this quarrel when we were afterwards
on board. He said, it is true that we seemed to break the truce,
but really had not, and that the war was begun the night before
by the natives themselves, who had shot at us and killed one of
our men without any just provocation; so that as we were in a
capacity to fight them now, we might also be in a capacity to do
ourselves justice upon them in an extraordinary manner : that
though the poor man had taken a little liberty with a wench, he
ought not to have been murdered, and that in such a villanous
manner; and that they did nothing’ but what was just, and what
the laws of God allowed to be done to murderers.

One would think this should have been enough to have warned
us against going on shore among heathens and barbarians; but it
is impossible to make mankind wise but at their own experience,
and their experience seems to be always of most use to them when
it is dearest bought.

We were now bound to the Gulf of Persia, and from thence to
the coast of Coromandel, only to touch at Surat ; but the chief of
the supercargo’s design lay at the Bay of Bengal, where if he
missed of his business outward bound, he was to go up to China,
and return to the coast as he came home.

The first disaster that befell us was in the Gulf of Persia, where
five of our men, venturing on shore on the Arabian side of the
gulf, were surrounded by the Arabians, and either all killed or
carried away into slavery. The rest of the boat’s crew were not
able to rescue them, and had but just time to get off their boat.
1 began to upbraid them with the just retribution of Heaven in