ce that
the villain could not draw the knife out again to repeat his blow, which
he would otherwise have done.

At this moment Gow came up from the butchery he had been at between
decks, and seeing the captain still alive, he went close up to him and
shot him, as he confessed, with a brace of bullets. What part he shot
him in could not be known, though they said he had shot him in the head;
however, he had yet life enough (though they threw him overboard) to
take hold of a rope, and would still have saved himself but they cut
that rope and then he fell into the sea, and was seen no more.

Thus they finished the tragedy, having murdered four of the principal
men in command in the ship, so that there was nobody now to oppose them;
for Gow being second mate and gunner, the command fell to him, of
course, and the rest of the men having no arms ready, not knowing how to
get at any, were in utmost consternation, expecting they would go on
with the work and cut their throats. In this fright everyone shifted for
himself. As for those who were upon deck, some got up in the round tops,
others got into the ship's head, resolving to throw themselves into the
sea rather than be mangled with knives and murdered as the captain and
mate, etc., had been. Those who were below, not knowing what to do, or
whose turn it should be next, lay still in their hammocks expecting
death every moment, and not daring to stir lest the villains should
think they did it in order to make resistance, which however they were
in no way capable of doing, having no concert one with another, not
knowing anything in particular of one another, as who was alive or who
was dead. Had the captain, who was himself a bold and stout man, been in
his great cabin with three or four men with him, and his fire-arms, as
he intended to have had, those eight fellows had never been able to have
done their work. But every man was taken unprovided, and in the utmost
surprise, so that the murderers met with no resistance; and as for those
what were left, they were less able to make resistance than the other,
so that, as has been said, they were in the utmost terror and amazement,
expecting every minute to be murdered as the rest had been.

But the villains had done. The persons who had any command were
dispatched, so they cooled a little as to blood. The first thing they
did afterwards, was to call up all the eight upon the quarter deck,
where they congratulated one another, an