hat I might depend upon good usage from their nation, on his account, if
I would go. But my thoughts were a little suspended when I had a serious
discourse with the Spaniard, and when I understood that there were
sixteen more of his countrymen and Portuguese, who having been cast away
and made their escape to that side, lived there at peace, indeed, with
the savages, but were very sore put to it for necessaries, and, indeed,
for life. I asked him all the particulars of their voyage, and found
they were a Spanish ship, bound from the Rio de la Plata to the Havanna,
being directed to leave their loading there, which was chiefly hides and
silver, and to bring back what European goods they could meet with there;
that they had five Portuguese seamen on board, whom they took out of
another wreck; that five of their own men were drowned when first the
ship was lost, and that these escaped through infinite dangers and
hazards, and arrived, almost starved, on the cannibal coast, where they
expected to have been devoured every moment. He told me they had some
arms with them, but they were perfectly useless, for that they had
neither powder nor ball, the washing of the sea having spoiled all their
powder but a little, which they used at their first landing to provide
themselves with some food.

I asked him what he thought would become of them there, and if they had
formed any design of making their escape. He said they had many
consultations about it; but that having neither vessel nor tools to build
one, nor provisions of any kind, their councils always ended in tears and
despair. I asked him how he thought they would receive a proposal from
me, which might tend towards an escape; and whether, if they were all
here, it might not be done. I told him with freedom, I feared mostly
their treachery and ill-usage of me, if I put my life in their hands; for
that gratitude was no inherent virtue in the nature of man, nor did men
always square their dealings by the obligations they had received so much
as they did by the advantages they expected. I told him it would be very
hard that I should be made the instrument of their deliverance, and that
they should afterwards make me their prisoner in New Spain, where an
Englishman was certain to be made a sacrifice, what necessity or what
accident soever brought him thither; and that I had rather be delivered
up to the savages, and be devoured alive, than fall into the merciless
claws of t