board the pirates with a promise of safety, several of the chief of them
knew me, and some of them had sailed with me, which I found to be of
great advantage; because, notwithstanding their promise, some of them
would have cut me to pieces, and all that would not enter with them, had
it not been for their chief captain, Edward England, and some others
whom I knew. They talked of burning one of their ships, which we had so
entirely disabled as to be no farther useful to them, and to fit the
Cassandra in her room; but in the end I managed the affair so well, that
they made me a present of the said shattered ship, which was Dutch
built, and called the Fancy; her burden was about three hundred tons. I
procured also a hundred and twenty-nine bales of the Company's cloth,
though they would not give me a rag of my own clothes.

"They sailed the 3rd of September; and I, with jury-masts, and such old
sails as they left me, made a shift to do the like on the 8th, together
with forty-three of my ship's crew, including two passengers and twelve
soldiers; having no more than five tuns of water aboard. After a passage
of forty-eight days, I arrived here on the 26th of October, almost naked
and starved, having been reduced to a pint of water a-day, and almost in
despair of ever seeing land, by reason of the calms we met with between
the coast of Arabia and Malabar.

"We had in all thirteen men killed and twenty-four wounded; and we were
told that we destroyed about ninety or a hundred of the pirates. When
they left us, they were about three hundred whites, and eighty blacks,
on both ships. I am persuaded, had our consort the Greenwich done his
duty, we had destroyed both of them, and got two hundred thousand pounds
for our owners and selves; whereas the loss of the Cassandra may justly
be imputed to his deserting us. I have delivered all the bales that were
given me into the Company's warehouse, for which the governor and