The Spanish soldiery of America then found themselves, in the presence
of European adventurers, in that state of pusillanimous inferiority in
which had been, at the period of the conquest, the subjects of the
Incas and Montezuma before the soldiers of Cortez and Pizarro. The
time was not already far passed, when a few bands of freebooters, from
France, England and Holland, had well nigh wrested from his Majesty,
the King of Spain and the Indies, the most extensive and wealthy of
his twenty-two hereditary kingdoms.

Stradling was following in the footsteps of these freebooters.

Recently, two little cities on the coast had been put under
contribution for the supplies of the Swordfish; there had been
resistance, a threatened attack, a parley, and capitulation; in this
affair, the young mate had nobly distinguished himself both as a
combatant and a negotiator, and yet the captain had not deigned to
give him a share in his distribution of compliments.

Selkirk felt an irritation the more lively that this shore life began
to be irksome. Not that his conscience disturbed him any more than in
the treatment of the blacks; he thought it as honorable to war with
the Spaniards in the New World, as to be beaten by them in the Old;
but he compared his present chief, Captain Stradling, with his former
commander, the noble and brave Admiral Rooke; the parallel extended in
his mind to his old companions in the royal navy, all so frank, so
gay, so loyal,--among whom he had yet never found a friend,--and his
new companions of to-day, recruited for the most part in the marshy
lowlands of the merchant marine of Scotland; his thoughts became
overshadowed, and his desires for independence, which dated from his
college life, returned in full force.