three pirate captains were on shore
at my friend Captain Glynn's, I asked leave to go to them, which was
granted, and next day I went on board in company with them. Captain
Davis desired Cochlyn to order all his people on the quarter-deck, and
made a speech to them on my behalf, which they falling in with, it was
resolved to give me the ship they designed to leave to go into mine,
with the remains of my cargo, and further, the goods remaining in the
other prizes, worth, with my own, several thousand pounds. Then one of
the leading pirates proposed that I should go along with them down the
coast of Guinea, where I might exchange the goods for gold, and that, no
doubt, as they went they should take some French and Portuguese vessels,
and then they might give me as many of their best slaves as would fill
the ship; that then he would advise me to go to the island of St. Thomas
and sell them there, and after rewarding my people in a handsome manner,
I might return with a large sum of money to London and bid the merchants
defiance.

This proposal was approved of, but it struck me with a sudden damp. So I
began to say it would not be proper for me to accept of such a quantity
of other people's goods as they had so generously voted for me. On which
I was interrupted by several, who began to be very angry.

[Illustration: 'SOME OF THE PIRATES . . . HAD THROWN SEVERAL BUCKETS OF
CLARET UPON HIM.']

On this Captain Davis said: 'I know this man, and can easily guess his
thoughts; for he thinks, if he should act in the manner you have
proposed, he will ever after lose his reputation. Now I am for allowing
everybody to go to the devil their own way, so desire you will give him
the remains of his own cargo and let him do with it what he thinks
fitting.'

This was readily granted; and now, the tide being turned, they were as
kind to me as they had at first been severe, and we employed ourselves
in saving what goods we could.

And through the influence of Captain Davis, one of the ships the pirates
had taken, called the 'Bristol Snow,' was spared from burning--for they
burned such prizes as they had no use for. And I was set entirely at
liberty, and went to the house of Captain Glynn, who, when the pirates
left the river of Sierra Leone, together with other English captains who
had been hiding from the pirates in the woods, their ships having been
taken, helped me to fit up the 'Bristol Snow' that we might return to
England in it.