onfirmed in it when they heard the captain with a stern fury call
to them, _Stand off, ye wretches, at your peril_. He quickly cast them
into more than ordinary confusion when they saw him ready to fire his
great guns upon them.

"And when he had signified unto them his resolve to abandon them unto
all the desolation which they had proposed for him, he caused the
bridge to be again laid, and his men began to take the provisions on
board. When the wretches beheld what was coming upon them, they fell
to very humble entreaties; and at last fell down upon their knees
protesting that they never had anything against him, except only his
unwillingness to go away with the King's ship upon the South Sea
design. But upon all other accounts they would choose rather to live
and die with him than with any man in the world. However, when they
saw how much he was dissatisfied at it, they would insist upon it no
more, and humbly begged his pardon. And when he judged that he had
kept them on their knees long enough, he having first secured their
arms, received them aboard, but he immediately weighed anchor and
arriving at Jamaica, turned them off."

This is a very proper incident to have happened in a hunt for hidden
treasure, and Cotton Mather tells it well. One forgives Phips for
damning the eyes of the Boston magistrates, and likely enough they
deserved it, when it is recalled that the witchcraft trials were held
only a few years later. Having rid himself of the mutineers, Captain
Phips shipped other scoundrels in their stead, there being small choice
at Jamaica where every other man had been pirating or was planning to
go again. His first quest for treasure had been a failure, but he was
not the man to quit, and so he filled away for Hispaniola, now Hayti
and San Domingo, where every bay and reef had a treasure story of its
own.

The small island of Tortuga off that coast had long been the
headquarters of the most successful pirates and buccaneers of those
seas, and Frederick A. Ober, who knows the West Indies as well as any
living man, declares not only that Cuba, the Isle of Pines, Jamaica,
and Hispaniola are girdled with Spanish wrecks containing "as yet
unrecovered millions and millions in gold and silver," but also that
"during the successive occupancies of Tortuga by the various pirate
bands great treasure was hidden in the forest, and in the caves with
which the island abounds. Now and again the present cultivator