1708-1711

THE VOYAGE WITH WOODES ROGERS [24]

Dampier probably obtained the next berth we find him filling through the influence of Woodes Rogers. There is no doubt that it was owing to Dampier's influence and representations that the expedition under Rogers was equipped and despatched. Harris tells us that he addressed himself to the merchants of Bristol, who listened to his proposals with patience and interest. At all events his experience would enable him to submit to them that his own, and indeed the failures of others, were owing, not to the voyage being a dangerous or difficult one, not to the courage nor to the superior strength of the enemy, not to any lack of the right kind of qualities amongst the crews, but simply to those undertakings having been badly organised at the start, unwisely [Pg 139] officered, and injudiciously conducted. The Bristol merchants fully agreed with him, and illustrated the spirit of their concurrence by fitting out two ships and refusing him any post of command. He and Rogers had long been acquainted, as may be gathered from several passages in his voyages. There is little question that it was Dampier's reputation which procured him his appointment as pilot to his friend; but I take it that Rogers warmly supported Dampier's solicitations, and that the advocacy of the chief commander proved powerful enough to neutralise, or at least to qualify, the prejudice which our hero's misfortunes as a freebooter and his half-heartedness as an explorer had excited against him.

As a pilot there was no man then living better qualified. He had spent long months of his life in the South Seas, and his knowledge of Indian and Pacific waters was varied and extensive. His name was also formidable to the Spaniards, a detail of considerable moment in the catalogue of privateering merits. His dignity could suffer nothing by his acceptance of the post of pilot to the expedition. Many sea-words have changed their old signification, and when we now talk of a pilot we think of a man whose business it is to navigate ships through short spaces of dangerous waters. There were of course pilots of this kind in Dampier's day. But in addition there were mariners selected for their knowledge of distant parts to accompany ships in voyages round the world, or to the ports of remote nations. The post was an honourable one; the pilot stood alone; he had not indeed the captain's general powers, but his duties were attended with many privileges, and he was looked up to as a person of authority and distinction. It was [Pg 140] such a position then as Dampier would have been willing to accept even though he had earned the value of an estate by his last voyage.

The expedition was promoted, as has already been said, by a number of Bristol merchants. Twenty-two names are given as representing only a portion of this very large committee of adventurers. The chief command was entrusted to Captain Woodes Rogers, a man who had suffered much from the French, and who was eager to repair as well as to avenge his injuries by reprisals. He had long been known as an intelligent officer and an excellent seaman. He had also a name as a disciplinarian, and he was further remarkable for the swiftness and sagacity of his decisions in moments of difficulty and peril. In point of literary merit his book is worthy to rank with Shelvocke's narrative, though the form and spirit of both are manifestly inspired by Dampier's volumes. The captain next in command was Stephen Courtney, who was also a member of the committee and the holder of a considerable share in the speculation. Rogers's second captain, or chief mate as he would now be called, was Thomas Dover, a physician by profession, who in his old age wrote a work called Dr. Dover's Last Legacy to his Country, in which he so effectually recommended the use of quicksilver that “ladies as well as gentlemen of rank and fortune bespangled the floors and carpets with this metal, and scattered their diamonds wherever they went to dance or to play.” [25] It is strange to hear of a doctor of medicine going as lieutenant of a buccaneering craft; [Pg 141] but it is stranger yet to read that Dover's bad temper was the cause of his being chosen. Yet his chief recommendation lay in his violent tongue, which, it was argued, would effectually prevent him from winning adherents, so that there was no chance of his weakening the expedition by heading or creating a party! [26] The captain under Courtney was Edward Cooke, a person of talent and observation and of no small literary ability, whose hatred of the French was only equalled by Rogers.

The venture was thoroughly matured before it was launched. Stringent rules and regulations serving as articles of war were drawn up and signed by the promoters, who called the document “The Constitution.” The experiences as well as the advice of Dampier may be traced in these rules. It was required that in case of death, sickness, or desertion, a council should be called of all the officers of the ships, that the person selected should be the unanimous choice, and that all attacks by sea or land should first be generally debated by the whole body of officers. In case of the votes for and against being equal, Captain Dover, as President of the Council, was to have the “double-voice.” The manifest object of these articles was to stop the bickerings which commonly attended the undertakings of the privateers, and which were often the cause of their failures and defeats, by importing the general voice into every decision. The ships were the Duke, of three hundred tons, thirty guns, and one hundred and seventy men, with Rogers and Dover as first and second captains; and the Dutchess, of [Pg 142] two hundred and seventy tons, twenty-six guns, and one hundred and fifty-one men, whose first and second in command were Courtney and Cooke. Both vessels were commissioned by Prince George of Denmark to cruise on the coasts of Peru and Mexico against the Queen's enemies, the French and Spaniards.

Dampier was on board Woodes Rogers: the story of the expedition, therefore, must be followed to its conclusion, though, unfortunately, our hero has no longer an individuality. His name indeed occasionally occurs, but he vanishes as a figure, and we are merely conscious as we follow the narrative that we are in his company, and that though he is lost to view he is sharing in the exploits and dangers, in the hopes and fears, of the crowd of resolute men whom he pilots.

The two ships set sail from Bristol, or rather from Kingroad, at the mouth of the river Avon, on Monday, August 1st, 1708, and arrived at Cork on the 9th in company with several other ships which had sailed under the convoy of a man-of-war called the Hastings. Until the 27th they were busy in thoroughly preparing the ships for the voyage. Here also they received a number of men to take the place of others who had been brought from Bristol, but who, even in the short trip across the St. George's Channel, had proved themselves worthless as sailors. When they weighed on the morning of the 28th their crews were unusually strong. Rogers says that he doubled the number of officers as a provision against mutinies, and also that there might be plenty of qualified persons to take command in case of death. The Duke indeed was so full of men that she was obliged to leave a portion of the boatswain's stores behind to [Pg 143] make room for the people. The proverbial qualities of the sailor show humorously at the outset of this voyage. All hands knew that they were to sail immediately, yet we read that “they were continually marrying whilst we staid at Cork.” An instance is given of a Dane whom a Roman Catholic priest had united in holy wedlock to an Irishwoman. Neither understood the other's tongue, and they were forced to hire an interpreter before they could tell each other how fond they were. The inconvenience of unintelligibility, however, did not cool their fervour; on the contrary, it was noticed that this Dane and his Irish wife were more affected by their parting than any of the other couples, “And,” says the narrative, “the Fellow continued melancholy for several Days after we were at Sea. The rest understanding each other, drank their Cans of Flip till the last Minute, concluded with a Health to our good Voyages and their happy Meeting, and then parted unconcerned.” The number of sailors in both ships when they weighed was three hundred and thirty-three, one-third of whom were foreigners. Many of them were by trade tinkers, tailors, haymakers, pedlars, and fiddlers; there were also a negro and ten boys.

Rogers was glad at the start to sail under convoy of a man-of-war. The holds of both the Duke and the Dutchess were flush to the hatches with provisions; the 'tween-decks were crowded with cables, with bags of bread, and casks of water; so that it would have been impossible to engage an enemy without throwing a large quantity of the stores overboard. There were one hundred and eighty-two men aboard the Duke and one hundred and fifty-one aboard the Dutchess, and the crowding, when the tonnage of the ships is thought of side by side [Pg 144] with their choked holds and 'tween-decks, must have rendered life at the start intolerable to the privateersmen. Despite their condition, however, they agreed to the proposal of the captain of the man-of-war that they should cruise a few days off Cape Finisterre; the crews of the vessels were thereupon mustered, and the nature and intention of the expedition explained to them, in order that such of the men as should show themselves discontented might be sent home as mutineers in the Hastings. All professed themselves satisfied with the exception of “one poor Fellow,” says Rogers, “who was to have been Tything-man that year, and was apprehensive his Wife would be obliged to pay 40 Shillings for his Default. But when he saw everybody else easy, and strong hopes of plunder, he likewise grew quiet by degrees, and drank as heartily as anybody to the good Success of the Voyage.” Yet, despite the assurances of the men, a mutiny happened whilst Rogers was on board a Swedish vessel he had chased, whose papers exempted her. The ringleaders were the boatswain and three of the inferior officers. Ten of the men were put in irons, and a sailor seized to the “jeers” (as the tackles were called which hoisted and lowered the fore and main yards) and punished by the usual process of whipping and pickling. The outbreak was so serious that all the officers went armed, not knowing what was next to happen. After some further trouble and much anxiety the mutiny was quelled, but it needed all Rogers's valuable qualities as a commander to deal with it.

I do not doubt, had Dampier been in charge, that the disturbance would have ended in the ruin of the voyage. Of the unruliness of the crews of that day, hundreds of [Pg 145] examples may be gathered from the contemporary records. The seaman of Dampier's age was undeniably a lion-hearted man, incomparably intrepid in his conflicts whether with the elements or with the enemies of his country; but it is equally true that most of his characteristics were those of the savage. He was a ruffian in his behaviour, he was a brute in his tastes, he conversed in a dialect that was almost wholly formed of oaths, and he pursued his calling in a skin soaked with the liquor that was served out to him by the gallon at the time. The average merchant-sailor of the last century has been sketched by Fielding in his Voyage to Lisbon. “It is difficult,” he says, “I think, to assign a satisfactory reason why sailors in general should of all others think themselves entirely discharged from the common bands of humanity, and should seem to glory in the language and behaviour of savages! They see more of the world, and have most of them a more erudite education, than is the portion of landmen of their degree.... Is it that they think true courage (for they are the bravest fellows upon earth) inconsistent with all the gentleness of a humane carriage, and that the contempt of civil order springs up in minds but little cultivated at the same time, and from the same principles, with the contempt of danger and death? Is it——? In short, it is so.” Happily we may now say it was so! But the reason is not hard to find. Roderick Random is a full and satisfying reply to Fielding's interrogatory. The sailor of that day was a brute because his life was that of a brute. He was for long months at a time absent from every possible refining influence. He was fed on provisions such as a dog would recoil from. His sea-parlour was a black, wet [Pg 146] hole, filled with vermin and loathsome with bad smells. His punishments were beyond expression inhuman; he was whipped until his back became a bloody mass, into which brine was rubbed that his sufferings might be rendered more exquisite. He was hoisted to a yard-arm, then dropped suddenly into the water and hauled violently under the ship's keel, and this was repeated until he was nearly drowned. He was lashed half-naked to the mast, and so left to stand for a period often running into days, insulted by his shipmates, and exposed to the scorching heat or the frosty sting of the parallels in which the ship happened to be; he was loaded with irons and immured for weeks in a dark and poisonous forepeak, whose only tenants besides himself were the huge rats of the vessel's hold. It was not, then, that the sailor regarded himself discharged, as Fielding suggests, from the common bands of humanity; he knew nothing of humanity, whether during his brief and roaring orgies ashore or during his long and bitter servitude upon the high seas. The traditions of those days still linger, and the sailor of our own times suffers to a certain extent from prejudices which were excited and perpetuated by the bold and reckless savages of the age of Dampier and, later on, of Fielding. But I am speaking of the average merchantman; it is readily conceivable that the buccaneer or privateersman should have gone far beyond him. He recognised no restrictions save those which were absolutely essential to his safety at sea; his profession of piracy rendered him insensible to cruelty by familiarising him with many of the most violent forms of it; he slept like a wild animal upon the hard deck, with a rug for his cover and nothing [Pg 147] else between him and the stars. Dampier grimly says in his chapter on the winds: “'Tis usual with Seamen in those parts to sleep on the Deck, especially for Privateers; among whom I made these Observations. In Privateers, especially when we are at an Anchor, the Deck is spread with Mats to lye on each Night. Every Man has one, some two; and this, with a Pillow for the Head and a Rug for a Covering, is all the Bedding that is necessary for Men of that Employ.” For one day the freebooter might feast on the fifty delicacies of a plundered ship, and for weeks his food would be so coarse and innutritious as to fill his eyes with the fires of famine and pale his cheek to the haggardness of the corpse. It needed exceptional and extraordinary powers of command to control such wretches. The qualities of the men in charge of Rogers and Courtney are significantly expressed by their early mutiny. Many of them were seasoned buccaneers—ruffians whom not even the common hope could keep straight. Fortunately for his employers, Rogers knew how to handle them.

On the 18th the two vessels captured a small Spanish ship which they carried to Teneriffe. There were some male and female passengers on board, and she was laden with what would now be called a general cargo. The English merchants, to whom possibly a portion of this cargo was consigned, objected to the capture, and represented that they would be in danger if the bark were not restored. The agent of the privateers, a man named Vanbrugh, went ashore and was detained, and it came very near to Rogers and Courtney bombarding the town of Oratava. When the inhabitants saw the vessels standing in with tompions out and all hands at quarters, [Pg 148] they offered to satisfy the demands of the buccaneers, who thereupon sold the prize for four hundred and fifty dollars and then made haste to sail away, very glad of the chance to once more “mind their own concerns,” as Rogers puts it. On the last day of September they dropped anchor in the harbour of St. Vincent, one of the Cape de Verde Islands. Scarcely were they arrived when fresh disturbances arose amongst the men. The mutiny originated in altercations touching the distribution of plunder, and with the hope of terminating these incessant and perilous brawls, the commanders went to work to frame such articles as they believed would inspire the seamen with confidence in the intentions of their superiors. The paper they drew up is preserved, and it is of interest as illustrating a form of marine life that for generations has been as extinct as the ships in which the privateersmen sailed. First of all it was settled that the plunder taken on board any prize by either ship should be equally divided between the companies of both ships. Any man concealing booty exceeding the value of a dollar during twenty-four hours after the capture of a prize was to be severely punished, and to lose his share of the plunder. Article the fourth provided that “If any prize be taken by boarding, then whatsoever is taken shall be every man's own as follows: viz. a Sailor 10 pounds, any Officer below a Carpenter 20 pounds, a Mate, Gunner, Boatswain, and Carpenter 40 pounds, a Lieutenant or Master 80 pounds, and the Captains 100 pounds each, above the gratuity promised by the owners to such as shall signalise themselves.” It was further agreed that twenty pieces of eight should be given to him who first saw a prize of good value. Another [Pg 149] article provided that every man on board, after the capture of a prize, should be searched by persons appointed for that purpose. This agreement was signed by the officers and men of both ships, and was perhaps the best, if indeed it was not the only, expedient that Rogers could have hit upon for silencing the constant mutinous growlings of the rapacious rogues under his command, unavailing as it subsequently proved.

They weighed on October 8th and steered for the coast of Brazil. In spite of thoughtfully-framed articles, handsome concessions on the part of the captains, and the taut discipline of the quarter-deck, the spirit of mutiny continued strong. The men were too numerous; the ship's work made demands upon only a portion of them at a time; the crew had therefore plenty of leisure, which they employed in haranguing one another into insubordination. As an example of the difficulty of dealing with these men, it is related that a fellow named Page, who was second mate of the Dutchess, was ordered on board the Duke to exchange posts with a man similarly rated. Captain Cooke was sent to fetch him; Page refused to come; a dispute followed, fists were doubled up and the men fell to blows. They managed at last to convey the mutinous mate to the Duke, but before they had time to charge him with his offence, he sprang into the sea and started to swim back to his ship. He was recaptured, lifted over the side and punished—probably spread-eagled and man-handled, after the old fashion. Disturbances of this kind were not calculated to gild the prospects of the sober-headed. In the Dutchess they had eight of the ringleaders of a party (who had proposed [Pg 150] to run away with the ship) under hatches in irons. There were repeated attempts to desert after the vessels had come to an anchor on November 18th off the coast of Brazil. Two sailors escaped into the woods, but were so terrified by the sight of a number of monkeys and baboons which they mistook for tigers, that they plunged into the water to the depth of their waists, and stood bawling for help until a boat was sent to fetch them aboard. One thinks of Dampier, hot-tempered and prone to despondency, talking with his friend Rogers about the troublesome posture of the crew, expressing many doubts as to the practicability of the voyage, and perhaps suggesting adventures remote from the prescription of the Bristol merchants. An incident peculiar to the old piratical life steals out in this part of the story. Early one morning the people who were on the look-out on the quarter-deck sighted a canoe gliding silently and shadow-like shorewards. It was hailed and ordered to come aboard; but no other answer was returned than the swifter plying of the oars. The pinnace and yawl were manned and sent in pursuit, and on approaching the canoe one of them fired into it to bring it to. It held on bravely nevertheless, but was captured as its stem smote the beach. One of her people was a friar, who with quivering knees instantly owned to possessing a little store of gold, obtained, as the rough sailors surmised, “by his trade of confessing the ignorant.” The father was very politely treated, but he did not seem to value the attention paid him by Captain Rogers. What he wanted was his gold, which there is no reason whatever to suppose he ever received. He talked of obtaining justice in Portugal or England, [Pg 151] and was answered by the hurricane shout to the forecastle to get the ship under-weigh.

The vessels were now fairly bound for the passage of the Horn. The crew, who in the torrid zone growled continuously and piratically in their gizzards, were no sooner in the high latitudes than they grew reasonable. It was the summer season in that hemisphere, but Dampier carried them so far south that all hands nearly perished of cold. At least a third of the people of both ships were down with sickness; and they barely escaped a languishing and miserable end by the good fortune of prosperous winds, which blew them swiftly northwards under more temperate heights. It was necessary to make land speedily for the sake of the men's health, and Juan Fernandez was fixed upon. They steered for the island, but the charts differed and they could not find it. Dampier was as much at a loss as the rest, and wondered at not being able to hit it, telling how often he had been there, and how he carried a most accurate map of the island about with him in his head. In order to find it they were forced to sail in sight of the coast of Chili, so as to obtain “a departure,” and then stretch away west upon the parallel of it, or thereabouts. They fell in with it at last, but not until after much fruitless scouring of the seas.

The name of Dampier is intimately associated with the passage that now follows. There is nothing, perhaps, in what may be termed the romantic chapters of the maritime annals more picturesque and impressive than the discovery by the Duke and Dutchess of Alexander Selkirk on the island of Juan Fernandez. The accentuation the story obtained from the genius of Defoe makes [Pg 152] it immortal. But even as a mere anecdote, without better skill brought to bear upon it than is found in the plain relations of Rogers and Cooke, its interest is so remarkable, it is so brimful of fascinating inspiration, that of all sea-stories it bids fair to be the longest remembered. Indeed it must be said that a great number of people, otherwise pretty well informed, are familiar with the name of Dampier only in connection with the strange, surprising adventures of Mr. Alexander Selkirk. The narrative belongs peculiarly to Dampier's experiences. Selkirk was mate of the Cinque Ports when her captain, Stradling, was Dampier's consort, and he was still that ship's mate when Stradling quarrelled with Dampier at King's Island in the Bay of Panama. The tale is related by Woodes Rogers and by Cooke, [27]—an old-world tale indeed, which every schoolboy has by heart; yet I cannot satisfy myself that its omission on the score of triteness only would be desirable in a volume that professes to recount the most striking passages in the naval career of William Dampier. Cooke's version is fuller than Rogers's—that is to say, he wrote two accounts of it, his reference to it in his first volume being deemed meagre and unsatisfactory by the public, who had been set agape by the wonderful yarn; but Rogers's narrative is the better written; besides, as Dampier is aboard the Duke, it is proper to allow his captain to speak. The full story is much too long for quotation at large in these pages; I therefore select the following as [Pg 153] amongst the most striking passages. They were off the island on February 1st, 1709, and sent the pinnace ashore with Captain Dover in charge.

“As soon as it was dark, we saw a Light ashore. Our Boat was then about a League from the Island, and bore away for the Ships as soon as she saw the Lights: We put our Lights aboard for the Boat, tho' some were of Opinion the Lights we saw were our Boat's Lights: But as Night came on it appeared too large for that. We fired our Quarterdeck Gun and several Musquets, shewing Lights in our Mizen and Fore Shrouds, that our Boat might find us whilst we were in the Lee of the Island: ... All this Stir and Apprehension arose, as we afterwards found, from one poor naked Man who passed in our Imagination, at present, for a Spanish Garrison, a Body of Frenchmen, or a Crew of Pirates.”

Next day they sent their yawl ashore, and as this boat did not return, they despatched the pinnace to Seek her. Rogers then continues:

“Immediately our Pinnace returned from the Shore and brought abundance of Crayfish with a Man cloathed in Goat-skins, who looked wilder than the first Owners of them. He had been on the Island Four Years and Four Months, being left there by Captain Stradling in the Cinque Ports; his Name was Alexander Selkirk, a Scotsman who had been Master of the Cinque Ports, a Ship that came here last with Captain Dampier, who told me that this was the best man in her, and I immediately agreed with him to be a Mate on board our Ship: 'Twas he that made the Fire last Night when he saw our Ships, which he judged to be English.... The reason of his being left here was a Difference between him and [Pg 154] his Captain; which, together with the Ship's being leaky, made him willing rather to stay here, than go along with him at first; and when he was at last willing to go the Captain would not receive him.... He had with him his Cloaths and Bedding, with a Firelock, some Powder, Bullets, and Tobacco, a Hatchet, a Knife, a Kettle, a Bible, some Practical Pieces, and his Mathematical Instruments and Books. He diverted and provided for himself as well as he could; but for the first eight Months had much ado to bear up against Melancholy and the Terror of being left alone in such a Place. He built two Huts with Pimento-trees, covered them with long Grass, and lined them with the Skins of Goats, which he killed with his Gun as he wanted, so long as his Powder lasted, which was but a Pound; and that being almost spent, he got Fire by rubbing two Sticks of Pimento Wood together upon his Knee. In the lesser Hut, at some Distance from the other, he dressed his Victuals; and in the larger he slept, and employed himself in Reading, singing Psalms, and Praying, so that he said he was a better Christian while in this Solitude than ever he was before, or than he was afraid he should ever be again. At first he never eat anything till Hunger constrained him, partly for Grief and partly for want of Bread and Salt: Nor did he go to Bed till he could watch no longer; the Pimento Wood, which burnt very clear, served him both for Fire and Candle, and refreshed him with its fragrant Smell.... By the Favour of Providence and Vigour of his Youth, being now but thirty Years old, he came at last to conquer all the Inconveniences of his Solitude and to be very easy. When his Cloaths were out he made himself a Coat and a Cap of Goat-skins, [Pg 155] which he stitched together with little Thongs of the same that he cut with his Knife. He had no other Needle but a Nail; and when his Knife was worn to the Back he made others as well as he could of some Iron Hoops that were left ashore, which he beat thin, and ground upon Stones. Having some Linen Cloth by him, he sewed him some Shirts with a Nail, and stitched them with the Worsted of his old Stockings, which he pulled out on purpose. He had his last Shirt on when we found him in the Island. At his first coming on board us he had so much forgot his Language for want of Use that we could scarce understand him; for he seemed to speak his Words by halves. We offered him a Dram; but he would not touch it, having drank nothing but Water since his being there; and it was some Time before he could relish our Victuals.”

It is easy to imagine the interest with which Dampier would listen to the recital of his old associate's strange adventures. Cooke tells us that Selkirk had conceived “irreconcilable aversion to an officer on board the Cinque Ports, who, he was informed, was on board the Duke, but not being a principal in command, he was prevailed upon to waive that circumstance and accompany Captain Dampier, for whom he had a friendship.” Whoever the person may have been, the Scotchman's dislike of him was bitter, and it was to Dampier's persuasions that Rogers owed the services of a man who proved of the utmost use to him whilst lying at the island by enabling him to supply the ships with fresh provisions and by facilitating the business of taking in wood and water. It is observable that Rogers styled Selkirk the governor of the island, a half-humorous and [Pg 156] half-pathetic fancy (when one thinks of the desperate loneliness of the unhappy man), which Defoe afterwards adopted when making Robinson Crusoe speak of his possessions and territories, his castles and his dependents.

The vessels arrived, as we have seen, on February 1st, and by the 3rd a smith's forge had been conveyed ashore, the coopers were hard at work, and there were tents, or “pavilions,” erected for the commanders and the sick. But it was their business not to lose time, for they had long before—that is to say, when they were at the Canaries—heard that five large French ships were coming to search for them in the South Sea; so that very quickly, all the sick men happily recovering rapidly with the exception of two who died, they had refitted their ships, taken in wood and water, and boiled down and stowed away about eighty gallons of sea-lions' oil to use for the lamps, that they might save the candles. This done they set sail, after holding a consultation, which resulted in further regulations for the preservation of discipline; and on May 15th captured a little vessel of sixteen tons, whose master furnished them with the reassuring news that seven French ships, which had been cruising off this part of the coast for some time, had six months previously gone away for the Horn, and it was added they were not likely to return. There was other news besides of a kind to make their mouths water, particularly that the widow of the deceased Viceroy of Peru would shortly embark for Acapulco with her family and the whole of her fortune, and probably break her journey at Payta. They were also told that some months previously a ship had sailed from Payta for Acapulco with two hundred thousand pieces of eight on board, together with a [Pg 157] rich cargo of liquors and flour. More useful information was conveyed in the statement that a certain Se?or Morel was waiting in a stout ship filled with dry goods for a vessel expected from Panama richly laden, with a bishop aboard, and that both craft would put to sea together. The idea of a bishop was commonly associated in the buccaneering mind with visions of the sacred splendours of the altar and the fruits of long years dedicated to painful hoarding. So it was straightway resolved by Rogers and his people to start for a cruise off Payta, meanwhile exercising all possible precaution against discovery lest larger designs should be spoilt.

A few days after they had come to this determination Captain Rogers and Captain Dover fell out. Rogers says that Dover charged him with insolence; Captain Cooke, on the other hand, takes Dover's part in his story of this passage. Difficulties of this kind were incessantly occurring amongst the buccaneers, and on the eve, too, very often of the execution of big projects. The quarrel, however, is not dwelt upon at length; probably the disputants quickly saw the wisdom of calling a truce that they might attend to the serious business of what is grandiloquently termed “the conquest of Guayaquil.” The great undertaking was settled thus: Dover was to command a company of seventy marines, Rogers another company of seventy-one officers and sailors, Courtney a third company of seventy-three men, and Dampier was to have charge of the artillery, with a reserve force of twenty-two seamen. Meanwhile Cooke was to command the Dutchess with forty-two men, and Captain Robert Fry the Duke with forty men; bringing up the whole force to a total of three hundred and twenty. In [Pg 158] addition there were blacks, Indians, and prisoners, to the number of two hundred and sixty-six; forming an army of five hundred and eighty-six people for the captains and officers to look after. The appetites of the buccaneers were shrewdly sharpened by the understanding that bedding, wearing apparel, gold rings, buttons, buckles, gold or silver crucifixes, watches, liquors, and provisions, should be reckoned fair plunder to be equally divided; but money, women's earrings, loose diamonds, pearls, and precious stones, were to be held as belonging to the merchants. On the 15th there was a smart engagement between the privateersmen's boats and a Spanish ship, in which Rogers lost his brother, who was second lieutenant on board the Duke. The vessel was captured, and proved to be the craft in which the bishop had sailed; but he had gone ashore at Point St. Helena, leaving the ship to carry his property to Lima. She had seventy blacks and a number of passengers on board. The lading consisted of bale goods, and a considerable quantity of pearls were found in her. Captain Cooke took charge, and the prisoners were divided between the Duke and Dutchess.

The little bark of sixteen tons which they had taken some time previously they named the Beginning, and on April 21st in the morning she was sent to cruise close inshore to see all clear for the landing of the men. The report she brought was that there was a vessel riding close under the point whose crew, on sighting the Beginning, had hurried ashore and vanished. On this the privateersmen rowed towards the town of Guayaquil. The night drew down dark; the men pulled stealthily with muffled oars; an hour before midnight [Pg 159] they saw a light suddenly spring up in the town, towards which they continued to row very softly until they were within a mile of it; when on a sudden they were brought to a halt by hearing a sentinel call to another and talk to him. Concluding they were discovered, the buccaneers pulled across the river, and lay still and very quiet, waiting and watching. In a few minutes the whole town flashed out into lights, the resonant notes of a great alarm-bell swang through the soft wind, several volleys of musketry were discharged, and a large fire was kindled on the hill to let the town know that the enemy was in the river. The officers in charge of the boats, confounded by this unexpected discovery of their presence, fell to a hot argument and grew so angry that their voices were heard ashore. The Spaniards, who could not understand them, sent post-haste for an Englishman who was then living in the town, and brought him, very secretly, close to the boats that he might interpret what was said. But before he arrived the privateersmen had concluded their arguments. [28] They remained all night in the river, and next day contented themselves with capturing a number of vessels, and receiving the governor under a flag of truce to treat with him about the ransom of the town and ships. But nothing came of the interview; and at four o'clock in the afternoon, on April 23d, the whole force of the buccaneers landed and attacked the place. The Spaniards fired a single volley and fled; the English pressed forward and seized the enemy's cannon, from which every gunner had run saving one, an Irishman, [Pg 160] who gallantly stuck to his post until he dropped mortally wounded. The seamen marched through both towns—the Spaniards flying pell-mell before them firing the houses as they tramped forwards, and leaving gangs of men behind them to guard the churches. There was a thick wood on the right of the place, and all night long the enemy continued to fire from among the trees at the English sentries, but without injuring a man. From time to time bodies of horse and foot showed themselves, but only to wheel about and fly to the first musket levelled at them. Meanwhile a party of twenty-two men went in the Dutchess's pinnace up the river, and sacked every house they came across. The enemy was easily kept at bay, and the buccaneers had no trouble in sending booty and provisions in quantities to their ships. In due course messengers, flourishing flags of truce, came to talk about ransoming the town, and after much discussion, the offer of thirty thousand dollars was accepted, of which twenty-five thousand were paid.

The depredations of the buccaneers had been indeed serious enough............