288 LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF

the Spaniards to help them, which they very readily did ; and
in four days worked a great hole in the side of the hill for
them, big enough to secure their corn and other things from
the rain: but it was a poor place at best compared to mine,
and especially as mine was then, for the Spaniards had greatly
enlarged it, and made several new apartments in it,

About three quarters of a year after this separation, a new
frolic took these rogues, which, together with the former
villainy they had committed, brought mischief enough upon
them, and had very near been the ruin of the whole colony.
The three new associates began, it seems, to be weary of the
laborious life they led, and that without hope of bettering their
circumstances : and a whim took them that they would make
a voyage to the continent, from whence the savages came, and
would try if they could seize upon some prisoners among the
natives there, and bring them home, so as to make them do the
laborious part of the work for them.

The project was not so preposterous, if they had gone no
further, But they did nothing, and proposed nothing, but had
either mischief in the design, or mischief in the event. And
if | may give my opinion, they seemed to be under a blast: from
Heaven: for if we will not allow a visible curse to pursue visible
crimes, how shall we reconcile the events of things with the
divine justice? It was certainly an apparent vengeance on
their crime of mutiny and piracy that brought them to the
state they were in; and they showed not the least remorse for
the crime, but added new villainies to it, such as the piece of
monstrous cruelty of wounding a poor slave because he did not,
or perhaps could not, understand to do what he was directed,
and to wound him in such a manner as made him a cripple all
his life, and in a place where no surgeon or medicine could be
had for his eure; and, what was still worse, the intentional
murder, for such to be sure it was, as was afterwards the
formed design they all laid to murder the Spaniards in cold
blood, and in their sleep.

The three fellows came down to the Spaniards one morning,
and in very humble terms desired to be admitted to speak with
them. ‘The Spaniards very readily heard what they had to say,
which was this: that they were tired of living in the manner
they did, and that they were not handy enough to make the
necessaries they wanted, and that having no help, they found
they should be starved; but if the Spaniards would give them
leave to take one of the canoes which they came over in, and
give them arms and ammunition proportioned to their defence,