ds, and at length embarked at Marseilles on a ship
for Italy. Rough weather coming on, the vessel anchored under the lee of
the little isle St. Mary, off Nice, in Savoy.

The passengers on board, among whom were many pilgrims bound for Rome,
regarded Smith as a Jonah, cursed him for a Huguenot, swore that his
nation were all pirates, railed against Queen Elizabeth, and declared
that they never should have fair weather so long as he was on board. To
end the dispute, they threw him into the sea. But God got him ashore on
the little island, whose only inhabitants were goats and a few kine. The
next day a couple of trading vessels anchored near, and he was taken
off and so kindly used that he decided to cast in his fortune with them.
Smith's discourse of his adventures so entertained the master of one
of the vessels, who is described as "this noble Britaine, his neighbor,
Captaine la Roche, of Saint Malo," that the much-tossed wanderer was
accepted as a friend. They sailed to the Gulf of Turin, to Alessandria,
where they discharged freight, then up to Scanderoon, and coasting
for some time among the Grecian islands, evidently in search of more
freight, they at length came round to Cephalonia, and lay to for
some days betwixt the isle of Corfu and the Cape of Otranto. Here it
presently appeared what sort of freight the noble Britaine, Captain la
Roche, was looking for.

An argosy of Venice hove in sight, and Captaine la Roche desired
to speak to her. The reply was so "untoward" that a man was slain,
whereupon the Britaine gave the argosy a broadside, and then his stem,
and then other broadsides. A lively fight ensued, in which the Britaine
lost fifteen men, and the argosy twenty, and then surrendered to save
herself from sinking. The noble Britaine and John Smith then proceeded
to rifle her. He says that "the Silkes, Velvets, Cloth of Gold, and
Tissue, Pyasters, Chiqueenes, and Suitanies, which is gold and silver,
they unloaded in four-and-twenty hours was wonderful, whereof having
sufficient, and tired with toils, they cast her off with her company,
with as much good merchandise as would have freighted another Britaine,
that was but two hundred Tunnes, she four or five hundred." Smith's
share of this booty was modest. When the ship returned he was set
ashore at "the Road of Antibo in Piamon," "with five hundred chiqueenes
[sequins] and a little box God sent him worth neere as much more." He
always devoutly acknowledged his