1681-1691

DAMPIER'S FIRST VOYAGE ROUND THE WORLD [8]

“April 17, 1681,” writes Dampier, “about Ten a Clock in the morning being 12 leagues N.-W. from the Island Plata, we left Captain Sharp and those who were willing to go with him in the Ship, and imbarqued into our Launch and Canoas, designing for the River of Santa Maria in the Gulf of St. Michael, which is about 200 leagues from the Isle of Plata.” The boats which carried them were a launch and two canoes; and their provisions consisted of a quantity of flour mixed with twenty or thirty pounds of powdered chocolate. That no man should venture the crossing of the Isthmus on foot who, by health or feebleness of will, might prove unequal to [Pg 45] the march, it was settled at the start that any one who faltered on the journey overland should be at once shot to death: “For,” says Dampier, “we knew that the Spaniards would soon be after us, and one man falling into their hands might be the ruin of us all by giving an account of our strength and condition; yet this would not deter 'em from going with us.” When abreast of Cape Passao they captured a small vessel and sailed to Cape St. Lorenzo, where they disembarked, after removing their provisions and clothes and scuttling their little ship. It was now May 1st, 1681.

The march of Dampier and his companions across the Isthmus of Panama is a feat that ranks amongst the most memorable of the traditions of travel and adventure. The qualities of the climate of that part of the world have found emphasis in our time in published accounts of the mortality among the people employed out there on the great French engineer's scheme of a canal. The land is watered by numbers of rivers filled with alligators; it is darkened and often rendered impenetrable by dense growths of tropical vegetation crowded with snakes; and in many places it is blocked by barriers of hills and mountains belted with miasmatic vapours. Our little company of buccaneers crossed the Isthmus in twenty-three days, in which time, according to Dampier's account, they travelled one hundred and ten miles. Their adventures were few, but the hardships constant and severe. For the most part they slept all night in the open, and repeatedly arose in the morning from their beds of mire with clothes saturated by storms of rain. Their surgeon, Lionel Wafer, was badly hurt in the knee by the explosion of a parcel of gunpowder,—an accident that gave his companions [Pg 46] much anxiety, “being lyable ourselves every moment to misfortune,” says Dampier, “and none to look after us but him.” On several occasions many of them were nearly drowned whilst fording rivers swollen with rains. The difficulties in the road of their progress may be gathered from a single incident. They had arrived at the banks of a river which they were obliged to cross. The water was deep and the current ran swiftly. It was proposed that those who could swim should assist those who were helpless in this way to the opposite bank; but then, how were they to transport the guns, provisions, and other articles that they carried? They decided to send a man over with a line, who, by means of it, would be able to haul the goods across, and then drag those ashore who could not swim. A fellow named Gayny secured the end of the line around his neck and plunged into the river, but the current kinked and entangled the rope in some way and threw the swimmer on his back. He had slung a bag containing three hundred dollars over his shoulder, and this weight, helped by the drag of the line, drew the unfortunate man under, and he was seen no more. They finally succeeded in crossing by felling a tall tree, which happily spanned the river and served them as a bridge. Their food consisted of fish and such animals as they could contrive to shoot, particularly monkeys, whose flesh they ate with relish. It was not until May 23rd that they came in sight of the Atlantic, which it was then the custom to speak of as the North Sea, and the next day they went on board a French privateer commanded by a Captain Tristian. Some of their comrades had died by the way, and some had been left behind. Amongst the [Pg 47] latter was Wafer, the surgeon, who a few weeks afterwards was met by Dampier while cruising in the neighbourhood of La Sound's Key. Some Indians came aboard, and brought with them the surgeon and survivors of the others who had been left on the Isthmus. “Mr. Wafer,” says Dampier, “wore a clout about him, and was painted like an Indian; and he was some time aboard before I knew him.” [9]

Captain Tristian, having Dampier and his comrades in the ship, set sail, and arrived in two days at Springer's Quay, where they found eight privateers lying at anchor. Four of them were English; two of ten guns each, and both carrying one hundred men; a third of four guns and forty men. The others were less formidable. The Dutch vessel mounted four guns and carried sixty men, and was commanded by one Captain Yanky. The Frenchmen were respectively of eight guns and forty men, and six guns and seventy men. Here, by guessing at the crews of the smaller ships, we arrive at a body of pirates numbering between five and six hundred fearless, determined, ferocious ruffians! It is conceivable that the Spaniards in those waters should have lived in a state of terror. The wonder is that the swarms of miscreants who preyed upon them should have left them a house to dwell in or a ducat to conceal.

[Pg 48]

After many debates it was agreed amongst the masters and crews of these vessels to attack a town the name of which Dampier says he has forgotten. The vessel into which our hero found himself drafted was a French craft of eight guns and forty men, commanded by a man named Archemboe. The fleet weighed, but during the night they were scattered by a hard gale, and when day broke Archemboe's ship was alone. Dampier, with others of his comrades who were with Archemboe, speedily learnt to hate their French associates. The sailors were utterly worthless in bad, and lazy, lounging loafers in fine, weather: “The saddest creatures that I was ever among,” writes Dampier, “but though we had bad weather that required many hands aloft, yet the biggest part of them never stirred out of their hammocks but to eat.” Later on they fell in with Captain Wright, who belonged to the fleet, and Dampier's English shipmates induced this man to fit out a prize of his for them; Dampier himself joining Wright, whose vessel, a barco longo, mounted four guns and carried fifty men. Shortly after this Wright, in company with the Dutchman, Captain Yanky, started on a cruise along the coast of Cartagena.

Dampier's narrative here is a very close, curious, and interesting description of the islands of this part of the sea and of the shores of the mainland. He also prints pages of notes about the birds common to those parts, the pearl-fishery, and other matters of a like kind. The charm of a sailor-like simplicity is in everything he says. “I have not been curious,” he writes in his preface to a New Voyage Round the World, “as to the spelling of the Names of Places, Plants, Fruits, Animals, etc., which in [Pg 49] many of the remoter parts are given at the pleasure of Travellers, and vary according to their different Humours: Neither have I confined myself to such names as are given by Learned Authors, or so much as enquired after them. I write for my Countrymen, and have therefore for the most part used such names as are familiar to our English Seamen and those of our Colonies abroad, yet without neglecting others that occur'd.”

Let Dampier's literary defects be what they may, assuredly unintelligibility is not one of them.

The cruise, in a buccaneering sense, was not a profitable one. They captured a few small vessels, but their prizes yielded them little more than some tons of sugar, marmalade, cocoa, hides, and earthenware. They then resolved to separate, and after dividing the plunder they parted company, having enough vessels in the shape of prizes to carry them wherever they might choose to go. Twenty of them, amongst whom was Dampier, putting their share of the booty into a small bark, set sail for Virginia and arrived there after an uneventful passage in July, 1682. In this country Dampier lived for thirteen months, but of his life he tells nothing, merely hinting that a great many troubles befell him.

Amongst the crew of the vessel commanded by the Dutchman, Captain Yanky—one of the piratical commanders with whom Dampier was associated after crossing the Isthmus—there had been a quartermaster named John Cooke, a Creole. On Yanky capturing a Spanish prize, Cooke, by virtue of his position according to the practice of the buccaneers, claimed and obtained command of her. But the privateersmen were of mixed [Pg 50] nationalities, and the French, growing jealous of the Englishmen, plundered and stripped the men who had been their shipmates and companions-in-arms, and turned them naked ashore. Captain Tristian, however, whose ship, it will be remembered, Dampier and his comrades boarded on the Darien coast, took pity upon the English, and carried ten of them, one of whom was Cooke, to the Island of Tortuga. Whilst they lay there at anchor the English rose, seized Tristian's vessel, and sailing away with her made two captures of importance, one of which they navigated to Virginia, where they arrived in April, 1683. Having sold the cargo of this prize they fitted her out as a privateer, mounting her, Captain Cowley says in his Voyage, with eight guns, though Dampier makes the number eighteen. They called her the Revenge. Dampier with many others volunteered to sign articles for her, and when she set sail her crew, according to Cowley, consisted of fifty-two, but according to Dampier of seventy men.

The voyage of the Revenge was written by Cowley as well as by Dampier—that is to say, a large portion of this voyage is included in Dampier's first volume of his Travels. Cowley's account is very full, wanting indeed the flavour of Dampier's style, and the vitality and archness of his descriptive powers; but in one sense Cowley is more interesting than the other—I mean, that as a freebooter he writes with far more candour than Dampier, whose narratives everywhere repeat by implication the direct apology he makes in the preface to his first volume:

“As for the Actions of the Company, among whom I made the greatest part of this voyage, a Thread of which I have carried on thro' it, 'tis not to divert the [Pg 51] Reader with them that I mention them, much less that I take any pleasure in relating them: but for method's sake and for the Reader's satisfaction; who could not so well acquiesce in my Description of Places, etc., without knowing the particular Traverses I made among them: nor in these, without an Account of the Concomitant Circumstances. Besides that, I would not prejudice the truth and sincerity of my Relation, tho' by omissions only. And as for the Traverses themselves, they make for the Reader's advantage; however little for mine, since thereby I have been the better inabled to gratify his Curiosity; as one who rambles about a Country can give usually a better account of it, than a Carrier who jogs on to his Inn, without ever going out of his Road.”

Cowley had not Dampier's sensitiveness; indeed, he might not have considered his conscience as a buccaneer unduly burdened. It is manifest that as he wrote he was still smarting under the trick that had been put upon him, and to gratify his resentment he related baldly all the truth he could recollect. He had been prevailed upon by Cooke to sail as master in the privateer, which was professedly bound to San Domingo, that her commander might at that island obtain a commission to legalise his acts at sea; but in reality Cooke's first, real, and only design was wholly one of piracy, and nothing was said to Cowley about it until the ship was well clear of the land, when, of course, he was forced to fall in with the scheme. [10] This was in the year 1683. Dampier was now thirty-one years of age, and fairly, but unconsciously, [Pg 52] started on the first of those voyages which were to make him in his day and to succeeding times one of the most distinguished of the circumnavigators of the globe.

The Revenge sailed from Achamack on August 23rd in the year just named. Nothing for many weeks broke the monotony of the passage save the incident of a heavy gale of wind which the vessel encountered off the Cape Verd Islands. Cowley dwells lightly upon this storm as if he would make little or nothing of it, but Dampier insists upon its being the most violent he had ever experienced in any part of the world. Indeed he has preserved an account of it in those chapters in the second volume of his Voyages, which he entitles, “A Discourse of Winds, Breezes, Storms, Tides, and Currents.” The nautical reader will, I hope, thank me for transcribing a passage that is more curiously illustrative of the seamanship and sea-technicalities of the period of history to which this narrative belongs than any like account by other hands that I can call to mind.

“If after the Mizan is hall'd up and furled, if then the ship will not wear, we must do it with some Headsail, which yet sometimes puts us to our shifts. As I was once in a very violent storm sailing from Virginia, mentioned in my Voyage Round the World, we scudded before the Wind and Sea some time, with only our bare Poles; and the ship, by the mistake of him that con'd, broched too, and lay in the Trough of the Sea; which then went so high that every Wave threatn'd to over-whelm us. And indeed if any one of them had broke in on our Deck it might have foundered us. The master, [11] whose fault this was, rav'd like a Mad Man and [Pg 53] called for an Axe to cut the Mizan Shrouds, and turn the Mizan mast overboard: which indeed might have been an expedient to bring her to her course: The Captain was also of his Mind. Now our Main-yard and Fore-yard were lowered upon a Port-last, as we call it, that is down pretty nigh the Deck, and the Wind blew so fierce that we did not dare to shew any Head-Sail, for they must have blown away if we had, neither could all the men in the ship have furled them again; therefore we had no hopes of doing it that way. I was at this time on the Deck with some others of our Men; and among the rest one Mr. John Smallbone, who was the Main instrument at that time of saving us. Come! said he to me, let us go a little way up the Fore-shrouds, it may be that that may make the Ship wear: for I have been doing it before now. He never tarried for an Answer, but run forward presently, and I followed him. We went up the Shrouds Half-mast up, and there we spread abroad the Flaps of our Coats, and presently the Ship wore. I think we did not stay there above 3 Minutes before we gain'd our Point and came down again; but in this time the Wind was got into our Mainsail, and had blown it loose; and tho' the Main-yard was down a Port-last and our Men were got on deck as many as could lye one by another, besides the deck full of Men, and all striving to furl that Sail, yet could we not do it, but were forced to cut it all along by the Head-rope, and so let it fall down on the Deck.”

A noticeable thing of their outward run is that they took above five months to sail from the coast of Virginia to abreast of Cape Horn. They got no sights after making Staten Island until they had entered the South [Pg 54] Sea, and were obliged to grope their way in their square-built, round-bowed, and clumsy old craft past the stormiest headland in the world, through weather blind with snow and black with cloud, and over seas running in mountains to the pressure of five hundred leagues of gale. When to the westward of the Cape they encountered one Captain Eaton in a privateer that had been equipped and despatched from London to plunder the Western American coast, and proceeded with him to Juan Fernandez, where they arrived eight months after leaving Achamack. Their first act was to send a canoe ashore to obtain news of the Mosquito Indian who had been left on the island three years before by Captain Watling. This Indian, who proved to be alive, is a figure in the history of romantic adventure scarce less conspicuous in his way than Alexander Selkirk or Peter Serrano. He was in the woods hunting for goats when Captain Watling and his men, alarmed by the apparition of three Spanish ships, slipped their cable and sailed away, and all that he had with him at the time consisted of a gun and a knife, a small horn of powder, and a handful of shot. Afterwards, by notching his knife to the condition of a saw, he contrived to cut the barrel of his gun into pieces, out of which he manufactured harpoons, lances, hooks, and a long knife. He was thus enabled to provide himself with food, such as flesh of goats, fish, etc. He built himself a hut a short distance from the sea, and lined it with goat-skins. His apparel consisted of a skin wrapped about his waist. There was another Mosquito Indian amongst the buccaneers, a man named Robin, who was the first to leap ashore to greet his brother black. Dampier tells us [Pg 55] that first Robin threw himself flat on his face at the feet of the other, who, helping him up and embracing him, fell flat on the ground at Robin's feet, and was by him taken up also. “We stood,” he says, “with pleasure to behold the surprise and tenderness and solemnity of this Interview, which was exceedingly affectionate on both Sides; and when their ceremonies of civility were over, we also, who stood gazing at them, drew near, each of us embracing him we had found here, who was overjoyed to see so many of his old friends come hither, as he thought, purposely to fetch him.”

They sailed from Juan Fernandez on April 8th, still in company with Eaton's ship. During the month of May they captured several vessels, in one of which, besides a quantity of marmalade, they found a stately and handsome mule designed as a gift for the President of Panama, and an immense wooden image of the Virgin Mary. They were, however, unfortunate enough to miss what would have better pleased them than mules and images; for when this ship started from Lima she had eight hundred thousand dollars on board, but on her arrival at Guanchaco news of a privateersman then hovering off the port of Valdivia came to the ears of the merchants, who thereupon instantly removed every stiver out of the vessel.

The recital, even in an abbreviated form, of the adventures of these buccaneers upon the Western American seaboard would make a book of nearly half the thickness of Dampier's first volume. As a mere journal of exploits perhaps the narrative grows after a while a little tedious. One sea-fight is like another; the assaults by land lead to nothing; the prizes captured at sea are insignificant. [Pg 56] Yet Dampier's page continues to charm us by the vivacity of his descriptions of coasts, of storms, of the corposant, of the turtle, and by a hundred unlaboured and unconscious felicities of phrase.

When off Cape Blanco Captain Cooke died. He was ill when at Juan Fernandez, and continued so till within two or three leagues of the Cape, when he suddenly expired, though Dampier tells us he seemed that morning to be as likely to live as he had been some weeks before; “But it is usual for sick Men coming from the Sea, where they have nothing but the Sea-Air, to die off as soon as ever they come within view of the Land.”

The command devolved upon Edward Davis, the quartermaster of the ship. Cooke's body was taken ashore, and whilst some of the crew were burying it three Indians approached, believing the men to be Spaniards, and were made prisoners, though one of them shortly after escaped. The others told the buccaneers of a farm where there was plenty of cattle to be had; and the attempt to steal the bullocks is marked by one of those incidents which convey a fuller idea of the resolved and desperate character of the freebooters, their perils, expedients, and astonishing escapes, than could be communicated by volumes of descriptions of their battles by sea and attacks by land. Twelve men slept ashore, intending when the morning came to drive the bulls and cows which were feeding in the savannas down to the beach; but when the afternoon of the next day arrived they were still ashore, and their shipmates aboard the vessel growing uneasy, ten men were sent in a boat to see what had become of them. On entering the bay they observed the twelve fellows on a small rock half a [Pg 57] mile from the shore standing in water to above their waists. It seems that, having slept through the night, they had risen betimes to catch the cattle, when they were suddenly surprised by forty or fifty armed Spaniards. The privateersmen drew together in a body, and retreated without disorder or confusion to the beach, but on arriving there they found their boat, which they had dragged out of the water, in flames. The Spaniards now made sure of them, and being numerous, ventured upon several sneers and scoffs before attacking them, asking them, for instance, if they would be so good as to do them the honour to walk to their plantation and steal their cattle and take whatever else they had a mind to, and so forth; to all which menacing and savagely deriding flouts the buccaneers answered never a word. The tide was at half-ebb; a privateersman catching sight of a rock a good distance from the shore, just then showing its head above water, whispered to the others that it would be as good as a castle to them if they could get there. Meanwhile the Spaniards were beginning to whistle a shot amongst them now and then. One of the tallest of the buccaneers waded into the water to try if the distance to the rock could be forded. The depth proved nowhere great; so the twelve marched over to the little distant stronghold, and there remained till their shipmates came for them. They stood about seven hours in all, and must have perished had the boat not then arrived, for the water was flowing, and the tide thereabouts rose to eight feet. The enemy watched them from the shore, but always from behind the bushes, where they had first planted themselves. “The Spaniards,” says Dampier contemptuously, “in these parts are very expert in heaving or [Pg 58] darting the Lance; with which upon occasion they will do great Feats, especially in Ambuscades: And by their good Will they care not for fighting otherwise, but content themselves with standing a loof, threatening and calling Names, at which they are as expert as the other; so that if their Tongues be quiet we always take it for granted they have laid some Ambush.”

Not very long after this Captain Davis and Captain Eaton separated, bringing the date to the second day of September 1684, and on the 24th Dampier's ship arrived at La Plata and anchored. Whilst lying at this island the privateers were joined by Captain Swan in a vessel named the Cygnet. This ship had been freighted by certain London merchants for honourable traffic with the Spaniards in the South Seas, but when she was at Nicoya there arrived a troop of privateersmen from overland, and Swan's men, bringing the pirates aboard, forced their captain to go a-buccaneering. That Swan was as reluctant to oblige them as he afterwards represented himself to have been to Dampier, is possible; it is certain, however, that on meeting with Davis he threw most of the goods he had been freighted to trade with overboard, that his ship, by being “clear,” as it is called, might be the fitter to fight and chase. He seems to have been a man of some foresight. Anticipating a time when there might happen such a scarcity of provisions as to force them out of those seas, he taught his men not only to eat, but actually to relish the oily, salt, and rancid flesh of penguins and boobys. “He would commend it,” says Dampier, “for extraordinary good food, comparing the seal to a roasting pig, the boobys to hens, and the penguins to ducks.”

[Pg 59]

The only land-attack of consequence was the attempt on Guayaquil by Swan and Davis. It was badly concerted and half-heartedly undertaken. They landed at about two miles from the town, and being unable to push their way through the tangled growths by night, sat down to wait for daylight. An Indian, who offered to pilot them, was attached to one of Davis's men by a string. The privateersman losing heart, secretly cut the string, and, when the guide had gone some distance, bawled out that the Indian was off and that somebody had cut the cord! What there was in this to terrify the others is not easily seen, but it is true, nevertheless, that their consternation was so great, not a man would venture a step farther. It was not long before they returned to their ship, and so ended their attempt on Guayaquil. The only material issue of this cheap adventure was their capture of three vessels, on board of which were no less than one thousand negroes,—“all lusty young men and women,” says Dampier, who laments that they did not convey the whole of them to the Isthmus of Panama, and employ them in digging for gold in the mines at Santa Maria. His idea might seem full of promise to him, but it takes another complexion when examined by the light of the experience of the twelve hundred men who embarked at Leith for Darien on July 26th, 1698.

On December 23rd, 1684, they sailed for the Bay of Panama, and nine days later, whilst proceeding from Tomaco towards Gallo, one of their canoes captured a pacquet-boat sailing from Panama to Lima. The Spaniards buoyed the bag of letters and threw it overboard, but it was picked up by the buccaneers, who [Pg 60] gathered from the despatches that the President of Panama had sent the mail-boat they had seized to hasten the sailing of the Plate Fleet from Lima. Dampier says that the privateersmen “were very joyful of this news,” which is intelligible enough when we consider that the King of Spain's treasure alone on board this fleet was commonly valued at twenty-four millions of dollars, whilst the worth of the galleons was still further increased by their carrying a vast amount in what was termed merchants' money, besides rich commodities of all sorts. It was at once settled that the buccaneers should intercept this fleet. They were in number now two vessels and three barks, and on February 14th, 1685, having finished the business of careening, cleaning, and watering their craft, they stood away for the Bay of Panama. Whilst they lay off the Island of Tobago they were nearly destroyed by a singular stratagem. A man feigning to be a merchant came to them from Panama. He professed to act as by stealth, in which the buccaneers found no cause for suspicion, for it was common enough for Spanish merchants to traffic privately with them, notwithstanding the prohibition of the governors. It was arranged that this merchant should fill his vessel with goods, and bring her by night to the English, who were to shift their berth to receive her. He came, but with a fire-ship instead of a cargo-boat, and approaching the English close, hailed them with the watchword that had been settled upon. The privateers growing suspicious, ordered the vessel to bring to, and on her not doing so, fired into her. Her crew instantly jumped into their boats, after firing the ship, which blew up and burnt close [Pg 61] alongside of the privateersmen, “so that,” says Dampier, “we were forced to cut our cables in all haste, and scamper away as well as we could.” Swan was also imperilled by another Spanish device. His ship lay about a mile distant, with a canoe made fast to his anchor-buoy. Just as the fire-ship blew up, Swan noticed something floating on the water close aboard of him. He peered, and discerned a man upon it softly paddling the contrivance towards his vessel. Probably the fellow suspected he was discovered, for he suddenly dived and disappeared.

Nothing particular happened till the 24th, when, being again at anchor off the Island of Tobago, about eighteen miles south of the city of Panama, they observed a number of canoes filled with men. They kept still, watching them the while; then lifting their anchors, approached and hailed them. They proved to be English and French privateers who had marched across the Isthmus; two hundred French and eighty Englishmen distributed amongst twenty-eight canoes under the command of Captain Grognet and Captain Lequie. These men stated that there still remained on the Isthmus at least one hundred and eighty Englishmen, commanded by Captain Townley, who when last heard of were busily employed in the construction of canoes to convey them to the South Sea. All the English of the party were immediately taken into the service of Captain Davis and Captain Swan, whilst one of the prizes was given to the Frenchmen. They were now a strong company of men. First of all there was Captain Davis in his ship of thirty-six guns, with a crew of one hundred and fifty-six determined rogues, chiefly English; Captain Swan, sixteen guns [Pg 62] and one hundred and forty men, all English; Captain Townley, one hundred and ten men; Captain Grognet, three hundred and eight men, all French; Captain Harris, one hundred men, chiefly English; Captain Branly, thirty-six men; besides three barks serving as tenders, and a small bark for a fire-ship—in all, nine hundred and sixty men. Formidable as this force looks, however, on paper, there were but two of the vessels—namely, Swan's and Davis's—which mounted guns. The rest had only small arms. On the 28th the Spanish fleet hove in sight: fourteen sail, besides periaguas rowing twelve and fourteen oars apiece. The admiral's ship carried forty-eight guns and four hundred and fifty men; the vice-admiral, forty guns and four hundred and fifty men; the others were only a little less powerfully armed and manned. Here we have the materials of a terrible fight, and we look with confidence to the buccaneers for a glorious victory. But never was failure completer. Nothing was done till the afternoon had darkened into evening, and then a few shots were exchanged. When the night came down the Spaniards anchored, and the buccaneers observed a light flaming in the admiral's top. It remained stationary for half an hour and was then extinguished. Soon afterwards it was again exposed, and the buccaneers, believing it to be still aboard the admiral, flattered themselves with having the weather-gage. But when the morning broke they found, to their disgust, that this light had been a stratagem, and that they were to leeward. The Spaniards sighting them, immediately bore down under a press of sail, and the buccaneers ran for it. “Thus,” says Dampier, “ended this day's work, and with it all that we had been [Pg 63] projecting for five or six months; when instead of making ourselves masters of the Spanish fleet and treasure, we were glad to escape them; and owed that too in a great measure to their want of courage to pursue their advantage.” He adds that the failure was largely owing to the cowardice of Captain Grognet and his men, whose only part in the man?uvring was running away. [12]

The buccaneers were now growing disheartened by their ill-luck. On August 25th, 1685, Davis and Swan separated, and Dampier, who had heretofore served under Davis, joined Swan, not, as he assures us, from any dislike of his old captain, but because he understood that it was Swan's intention before long to go to the East Indies, “which,” he exclaims, “was a way very agreeable to my inclination.” It was not, however, until March 1st, 1686, that they took leave of the Mexican coast and started on that voyage which led to Dampier's circumnavigation of the globe. They went in two ships, one commanded by Swan, and the other by a man named Teat. In number they were one hundred and fifty men—one hundred aboard Swan, and fifty, exclusive of some slaves, in the other vessel. Their start was for Guam, one of the Ladrone Islands, and the vagueness and uncertainty of the navigation of those days finds a sin [Pg 64]gular illustration in Dampier's surmise as to the actual distance between Cape Corrientes and their destination. He tells us that the Spaniards reckoned the distance about two thousand three hundred and fifty leagues, whereas the English calculations reduced it to less than two thousand leagues. The truth being unknown to the crews, they entered upon the voyage with something of that despondency and apprehension which the mariners of Columbus felt after they had lost sight of land. The hope of plunder heartened them somewhat, for Swan talked to them of the Acapulco ship and of a profitable cruise off the Philippines; but in sober truth with but little conscience in his assurances and exhortations, for the man had long since grown sick of privateering, and his main object in sailing for the East Indies was the desire to find an opportunity to escape from a calling which he was honest enough to consider dishonourable.

They sighted Guam on May 20th, ............