A New Voyage Round the World by a Course Never Sailed Before

by Daniel Defoe

captain three dozen bottlesof English beer, and a quarter cask of Canary, which was the bestpresent I had to make him; and sent every one of his other seamen apiece of eight per man; and, indeed, the assistance I had from the shipdeserved it; and to the mate, who acted so bravely with my men onshore, I sent fifty pieces of eight.

  The next day I went on shore to pay my respects to the governor, when Ihad all the prisoners delivered up to me. Six men I caused to beimmediately set at liberty, as having been innocent, and brought all therest on board, tied hand and foot, as prisoners, and continued them so,a great while afterward, as the reader will find. As for the secondmate, I tried him formally by a council of war, as I was empowered by mycommission to do, and sentenced him to be hanged at the yard-arm: andthough I suspended the execution from day to day, yet I kept him inexpectation of the halter every hour; which, to some, would have been asgrievous as the hanging itself.

  Thus we conquered this desperate mutiny, all principally proceeding fromsuffering the private disputes among ourselves, which ought to have beenthe arcana of the whole voyage, and kept as secret as death itself couldhave kept it, I mean so as not to come among the seamen afore the mast.

  We lay here twelve days, during which time we took in fresh water asmuch as we had casks for, and were able to stow. On the 13th day ofAugust, we weighed and stood away to the east, designing to make no landany more till we came to Java Head, and the Straits of Sunda, for thatway we intended to sail; but the wind sprung up at E. and E. S. E., andblew so fresh, that we were obliged, after two days' beating against it,to bear away afore it, and run back to the Cape of Good Hope.

  While we were here, there came in two Dutch East Indiamen more,homeward-bound, to whom had happened a very odd accident.

  They had been attacked by a large ship of forty-four guns, and a stoutsloop of eight guns; the Dutch ships resolving to assist one another,stood up to the Frenchman, (for such it seems he was,) and fought himvery warmly. The engagement lasted six or seven hours; in which theprivateer had killed them some men; but in the heat of the fight, thesloop received a shot, which brought her mainmast by the board; and thiscaused the captain of the frigate to sheer off, fearing his sloop wouldbe taken; but the sloop's men took care of themselves, for, hauling alittle out of the fight, they got into their own boats, and a boat whichthe frigate sent to their help, and abandoned the sloop; which theDutchmen perceiving, they manned out their boats, and sent and took thesloop with all that was in her, and brought her away with them.

  The Dutchmen came into the road at the Cape with this prize while ourship was there the second time; and we saw them bringing the sloop intow, having no mast standing, but a little pole-mast set up for thepresent, and her mizen, which was also disabled, and of little use toher.

  I no sooner saw her, but it came into my thoughts, that, if she wasanything of a sea-boat, she would do our business to a tittle; and, aswe had always resolved to get another ship, but had been disappointed,this would answer our end exactly; accordingly I went with my chiefmate, in our shallop, on board my old acquaintance the Dutch captain,and inquiring there, was informed that it was a prize taken, and that inall probability the captain that took her would be glad to part withher; and the captain promised me to go on board the ship that broughther in, and inquire about it, and let me know.

  Accordingly, the next morning the captain sent me word I might have her;that she carried eight guns, had good store of provisions on board, withammunition sufficient, and I might have her and all that was in her fortwelve hundred pieces of eight. In a word, I sent my chief mate backwith the same messenger and the money, giving him commission to pay forher, and take possession of her, if he liked her; and the Dutch captain,my friend, lent him twelve men to bring her off to us, which they didthe same day.

  I was a little put to it for a mast for her, having not anything onboard we could spare that was fit for a main-mast; but resolving at lastto mast her not as a sloop, but as a brigantine, we made shift with whatpieces we had, and a spare foretop-mast, which one of the Dutch shipshelped me to; so we fitted her up very handsomely, made her carry twelveguns, and put sixty men on board. One of the best things we found onboard her, were casks, which we greatly wanted, especially forbarrelling up beef and other provisions, which we found very difficult;but our cooper eked them out with making some new ones out of her oldones.

  After staying here sixteen days more, we sailed again. Indeed, I thoughtonce we should never have gone away at all; for it is certain abovehalf the men in the ship had been made uneasy, and there remained stillsome misunderstanding of my design, and a supposition of all thefrightful things the second mate had put in their heads; and, by hismeans, the boatswain and gunner.

  As these three had the principal management of the conspiracy, and thatI had pardoned all the rest, I had some thoughts of making an example ofthese; I took care to let them know it, too, in a manner that they hadno room to think it was in jest, but I intended to have them all threehanged; and I kept them above three weeks in suspense about it: however,as I had no intention to put them to death, I thought it was a piece ofcruelty, something worse than death, to keep them continually inexpectation of it, and in a place too where they had but little morethan room to breathe.

  So, having been seventeen days gone from the Cape, I resolved to relievethem a little, and yet at the same time remove them out of the way ofdoing me any capital injury, if they should have any such design stillin their heads. For this purpose, I caused them to be removed out of theship into brigantine, and there I permitted them to have a little moreliberty than they had on board the great ship; and where two of thementered into another conspiracy, as wild and foolish as ever I heard of,or as, perhaps, was ever heard of by any other; but of this I shall saymore in its place.

  We were now to sail in company, and we went away from the Cape, the 3rdof September, 1714. We found the brigantine was an excellent sea-boat,and could bear the weather to a miracle, and no bad sailer; she keptpace with us on all occasions, and in a storm we had at S. S. E., somedays after, she shifted as well as we did in the great ship, which madeus all well pleased with her.

  This storm drove us away to the northward; and I once thought we shouldhave been driven back to the Cape again; which, if it had happened, Ibelieve we should never have gone on with the voyage; for the men beganto murmur again, and say we were bewitched; that we were beaten offfirst from the south of America, that we could never get round there,and now driven back from the south of Africa; so that, in short, itlooked as if fate had determined this voyage to be pursued no farther.The wind continued, and blew exceeding hard: and, in short, we weredriven so far to the north, that we made the south point of the islandof Madagascar.

  My pilot knew it to be Madagascar as soon as he had a clear view of theland; and, having beaten so long against the sea to no purpose, andbeing in want of many things, we resolved to put in; and accordinglymade for Port St. Augustine, on the west side of the island, where wecame to an anchor in eleven fathom water, and a very good road.

  I could not be without a great many anxious thoughts upon our cominginto this island; for I knew very well that there was a gang ofdesperate rogues here, especially on the northern coast, who had beenfamous for their piracies; and I did not know but that they might beeither strong enough as pirates to take us, or rogues enough to entice agreat many of my men to run away; so I resolved neither to come nearenough the shore to be surprised, nor to suffer any of my men to go onshore, such excepted as I could be very secure of.

  But I was soon informed by a Dutchman, who came off to me with some ofthe natives in a kind of canvass boat, that there were no Europeansthere but himself, and the pirates were on the north part of the island;that they had no ship with them of any force, and that they would beglad to be fetched off by any Christian ship; that they were not abovetwo hundred in number, their chief leaders, with the only ships of forcethey had, being out a cruising on the coast of Arabia, and the Gulf ofPersia.

  After this, I w
ent on shore myself with Captain Merlotte, and some ofthe men whom I could trust; and we found it true as the Dutchman hadrelated. The Dutchman gave us a long history of his adventures, and howhe came to be left there by a ship he came in from Europe, which, herunning up into the country for sport with three more of his comrades,went away without them, and left them among the natives, who, however,used them extremely well; and that now he served them for an interpreterand a broker, to bargain for them with the European ships forprovisions. Accordingly, he engaged to bring us what provisions wepleased, and proposed such trinkets in return as he knew the nativesdesired, and as were of value little enough to us; but he desired aconsideration for himself in money, which, though it was of no use tohim there, he said it might be hereafter; and, as his demand was buttwenty pieces of eight, we thought he very well deserved them.

  Here we bought a great quantity of beef, which, having no casks tospare, we salted, and then cured it in the sun, by the Dutchman'sdirection, and