rs.

We were a slender company, but we managed extraordinarily well. The men
were wonderfully content; I never heard so much as a murmur escape one
of them; they never exceeded their rations nor asked for a drop more of
liquor than we had agreed among us should be served out. But, as I had
anticipated, our security lay in our slenderness. We were too few for
disaffection. The negroes were as simple as children, Wilkinson looked
to find his account in a happy arrival, and if I was not, strictly
speaking, their captain, I was their navigator without whom their case
would have been as perilous as mine was on the ice.

Outside the natural dangers of the sea we had but one anxiety, and that
concerned our being chased and taken. This fear was heartily shared by
my companions, to whom I also represented that it must be our business
to give even the ships of our country a wide berth; for, though I had
long since flung all the compromising bunting overboard, and destroyed
all the papers I could come across, which being written in a language I
was ignorant of, might, for all I knew, contain some damning
information, a British ship would be sure to board us and I should have
to tell the truth or take the risks of prevaricating. If I told the
truth, then I should have to admit that the lading of the vessel was
piratical plunder; and though I knew not how the law stood with regard
to booty rescued from certain destruction after the lapse of hard upon
half a century, yet it was a hundred to one that the whole would be
claimed in the king's name under a talk of restitution, which signified
that we should never hear more of it. On the other hand prevarication
would not fail to excite suspicion, and on our not being able to
satisfactorily account for our possession of the ship and what was in
her, it might end in our actually being seized as pirates and perhaps
executed.

This reasoning went very well with the men and filled them with such
anxiety that they were for ever on the look-out for a sail. But, as you
may guess, my own solicitude sank very much deeper; for, supposing the
schooner to be rummaged by an English crew, it was as certain as that my
hand was affixed to my arm that the chests of treasure would be
transhipped and lost to me by the law's trickery.

Now, till we were to the north of the equator we sighted nothing; no, in
all those days not a single sail ever hove into view to break the
melancholy continuity of the sea