gh your kindness the other day," said I to
another, who was well and smartly dressed, "I'll thank you to strip to
your skin, or you shall have no skin left." And I commenced with my
knife cutting his ears as if I would skin them.

It was a lucky hit of mine, for in his sash I found about twenty
doubloons. He would have saved them, and held them tight, but after my
knife had entered his side about half an inch, he surrendered the
prize. After we had plundered and stripped them of every thing, we set
to to kick them, and we did it for half an hour so effectually that
they were all left groaning in a heap on the ballast, and we then
found our way on deck.

The privateer which had recaptured us proved to be the Hero, of New
Providence; the Frenchmen were taken out, and some of her own men put
in to take us to Port Royal; we being wounded, and not willing to join
her, remained on board. On our arrival at Port Royal, we obtained
permission to go to the King's Hospital to be cured. As I went up
stairs to the ward allotted to me, I met the French lady whose husband
had been killed, and who was still nursing her son at the hospital,
his wounds not having been yet cured. Notwithstanding my altered
appearance, she knew me again immediately, and seeing me pale and
emaciated, with my arm in a sling, she dropped down on her knees and
thanked God for returning upon our heads a portion of the miseries we
had brought upon her. She was delighted when she heard how many of us
had been slain in the murderous conflict, and even rejoiced at the
death of poor Captain Weatherall, which, considering how very kind and
considerate he had been to her, I thought to be very unchristian.

It so happened that I was not only in the same ward, but in the cradle
next to her son, and the excitement I had been under when we were
recaptured, and my exertion in kicking the Frenchmen, had done me no
good. A fever was the consequence, and I suffered dreadfully, and she
would look at me, exulting in my agony, and mocking my groans, till at
last the surgeon told her it was by extreme favour that her son had
been admitted into the hospital instead of being sent to prison, and
that if she did not behave herself in a proper manner, he would order
her to be denied admittance altogether, and that if she dared to
torment suffering men in that way, on the first complaint on my part,
her son should go to the gaol and finish his cure there. This brought
her to her sen