880 A NOBLE GENEROSITY.

kindness shown them was wanting; the French, it is known, ure
naturally apt to exceed that way. The captain and one of the
priests came to me the next day, and desiring to speak with me
and my nephew the commander, began to consult with us what
should be done with them. And first they told us that, as we had
saved their lives, so all they had was little enough for a return to
us for that kindness received. The captain said, they had saved
some money and some things of value in their boats, caught
hastily up out of the flames, and if we would accept it, they were
ordered to make an offer of it all to us; they only desired to be
set on shore somewhere in our way, where, if possible, they might
get passage to France.

My nephew was for accepting their money at first word, and to
consider what to do with them afterwards; but I overruled him
in that part, for T knew what it was to be set on shore in a strange
country; and if the Portugal captain that took me up at sea had
served mo so, and took all T had for my deliverance, T raast have
starved, or have been as much a slave at the Brazils as | had been
in Barbary, the mere being sold to a Mohammedan excepted; and
perhaps a Portuguese is not much a better master than a Turk, if
not in some cases a2 much worse.

I therefore told the French captain, that we had taken them up
in their distress, it was true, but that it was our duty to do so as
we were fellow-creatures, and as we would desire to be so delivered
if we were in the like or any other extremity ; that we had done
nothing for them but what we believed they would have done for
us, if we had been in their case and they in ours: but that we took
them up to save them, not to plunder them; and it would be a
most barbarous thing to take that little from them which they
had saved out of the fire, and then set them on shore and leave
them; that this would be first to save them from death and then
to kill them ourselves, save them from drowning and abandon them
to starving ; and therefore T would not let the least thing be taken
from them. As to setting them on shore, I told them indeed that
was an exceeding difficulty to us, for that the ship was bound to the
Nast Indies, and though we were driven out of our course to the
westward a very great way, and perhaps were directed by Heaven