lady, said such foul and devilish things as I should be ashamed
either for me to speak, or you to hear. At this we were like men amazed
for very horror; and Mr. Oxenham said, 'You incarnate fiends, if you had
taken these fellows for slaves, it had been fair enough; for you were
once slaves to them, and I doubt not cruelly used enough: but as for
this abomination,' says he, 'God do so to me, and more also, if I
let one of them come into your murderous hands.' So there was a great
quarrel; but Mr. Oxenham stoutly bade put the prisoners on board
the ships again, and so let the prizes go, taking with him only the
treasure, and the lady and the little maid. And so the lad went on to
Panama, God's wrath having gone out against us.

"Well, sirs, the Cimaroons after that went away from us, swearing
revenge (for which we cared little enough), and we rowed up the river
to a place where three streams met, and then up the least of the three,
some four days' journey, till it grew all shoal and swift; and there we
hauled the pinnace upon the sands, and Mr. Oxenham asked the men whether
they were willing to carry the gold and silver over the mountains to the
North Sea. Some of them at first were loath to do it, and I and others
advised that we should leave the plate behind, and take the gold only,
for it would have cost us three or four journeys at the least. But Mr.
Oxenham promised every man 100 pezos of silver over and above his wages,
which made them content enough, and we were all to start the morrow
morning. But, sirs, that night, as God had ordained, came a mishap by
some rash speeches of Mr. Oxenham's, which threw all abroad again; for
when we had carried the treasure about half a league inland, and hidden
it away in a house which we made of boughs, Mr. O. being always full of
that his fair lady, spoke to me and William Penberthy of Marazion, my
good comrade, and a few more, saying, 'That we had no need to return
to England, seeing that we were already in the very garden of Eden, and
wanted for nothing, but could live without labor or toil; and that it
was better, when we got over to the North Sea, to go and seek out some
fair island, and there dwell in joy and pleasure till our lives' end.
And we two,' he said, 'will be king and queen, and you, whom I can
trust, my officers; and for servants we will have the Indians, who, I
warrant, will be more fain to serve honest and merry masters like us
than those Spanish devils,' and muc