h the prisoners we had; for it was worth considering whether we
might venture to take them away with us or no, especially two of them,
whom he knew to be incorrigible and refractory to the last degree; and
the captain said he knew they were such rogues, that there was no
obliging them; and if he did carry them away, it must be in irons, as
malefactors, to be delivered over to justice at the first English colony
he could come at; and I found that the captain himself was very anxious
about it. Upon this I told him, that if he desired it, I would undertake
to bring the two men he spoke of to make it their own request that he
should leave them upon the island. "I should be very glad of that," says
the captain, "with all my heart."--"Well," says I, "I will send for
them up, and talk with them for you," So I caused Friday and the two
hostages, for they were now discharged, their comrades having performed
their promise; I say, I caused them to go to the cave, and bring up the
five men, pinioned as they were, to the bower, and keep them there till
I came. After some time, I came thither dressed in my new habit; and now
I was called governor again. Being all met, and the captain with me, I
caused the men to be brought before me, and I told them I had got a full
account of their villanous behaviour to the captain, and how they had
run away with the ship, and were, preparing to commit farther robberies,
but that Providence had ensnared them in their own ways, and that they
were fallen into the pit which they had dug for others. I let them know
that by my direction the ship had been seized; that she lay now in the
road; and they might see, by and by, that their new captain had received
the reward of his villany, and that they would see him hanging at the
yard-arm: that as to them, I wanted to know what they had to say why I
should not execute them as pirates, taken in the fact, as by my
commission they could not doubt but I had authority so to do.

One of them answered in the name of the rest, that they had nothing to
say but this, that when they were taken, the captain promised them their
lives, and they humbly implored my mercy. But I told them I knew not
what mercy to show them; for as for myself, I had resolved to quit the
island with all my men, and had taken passage with the captain to go for
England; and as for the captain, he could not carry them to England
other than as prisoners, in irons, to be tried for mutiny, and runnin