and drink, and a quiet life. Many of
Shelvocke's men followed this example, and I may venture to say, that
most of them had the same substantial reason for their conversion.
It is here reckoned very meritorious to make a convert, and many
arguments were used for that purpose, but no rigorous measures
were used to bring any one over to their way of thinking. Those who
consented to be baptized, generally had some of the merchants of Lima
for their patrons and god-fathers, who never failed to give them a
good suit of clothes, and some money to drink their healths.

About this time four or five of Clipperton's men had leave from the
convents where they resided, to meet together at a public-house kept
by one John Bell, an Englishman, who had a negro wife, who had been
made free for some service or other. The purpose of this meeting was
merely to confirm their new baptism over a bowl of punch; but they all
got drunk and quarrelled, and, forgetting they were true catholics,
they demolished the image of some honest saint that stood in a corner,
mistaking him for one of their companions. Missing them for a few
days, I enquired at Bell what was become of them, when he told me they
were all in the Inquisition; for the thing having taken air, he was
obliged to go himself to complain of their behaviour, but he got them
released a few days after, when they had time to repent and get
sober in the dungeons of the holy office. Bell said, if these men had
remained heretics, their drunken exploit had not come within the verge
of the ecclesiastical power; but as they were novices, they were the
easier pardoned, their outrages on the saint being attributed to the
liquor, and not to any designed affront to the catholic faith, or a
relapse into heresy.

Some time afterwards, about a dozen of our men from the Success and
Speedwell were sent to Calao, to assist in careening and fitting out
the Flying-fish, designed for Europe. They here entered into a plot
to run away with the Margarita, a good sailing ship which lay in the
harbour, meaning to have gone for themselves, in which of course they
would have acted as pirates. Not knowing what to do for ammunition and
a compass, they applied to Mr Sergeantson, pretending they meant to
steal away to Panama, where there was an English factory, and whence
they had hopes of getting home. They said they had got half a dozen
firelocks, with which they might be able to kill wild hogs or other
game, as th