.

_Minnes._ The greatness of the fog might occasion it.

_Wh._ The lights would appear through the fog as well as in the night.

_Minnes._ My Lord, I did all this.

_Wh._ It was contrary to my orders for you to keep so far off from me,
and to be on-stern of me three leagues; but this hath been your practice
since we first came out to sea together; and if you had been under the
command of some others, as you were under mine, they would have expected
more obedience than you have given to my orders, or have taken another
course with you, which I can do likewise.

_Minnes._ My Lord, I endeavoured to get the wind of you, that I might
thereby be able to keep in your company, which otherwise I could not have
done, you being so much fleeter than the 'Elizabeth;' but in the evenings
I constantly came up to your Excellence.

_Wh._ Why did you not so the last night?

_Minnes._ The fog rose about five o'clock, and was so thick that we could
not see two ships' length before us. In that fog I lost you, and, fearing
there might be danger in the night to fall upon the coast, I went off to
sea, supposing you had done so likewise, as, under favour, your captain
ought to have done; and for my obedience to your Excellency's commands,
it hath been and shall be as full and as willing as to any person living.

_Wh._ When you found by my guns that you were so far from me to the
windward, you might fear that I was fallen into that danger which you had
avoided by keeping yourself under the wind more at large at sea.

_Minnes._ If I had in the least imagined your Excellence to have been in
danger, we had been worse than Turks if we had not endeavoured to come in
to your succour; and though it was impossible, as we lay, for our ship to
come up to your Excellence, yet I should have adventured with my boats to
have sought you out. But that you were in any danger was never in our
thoughts; and three hours after your guns fired, sounding, I found by the
lead the red sand, which made me think both your Excellence and we might
be in the more danger, and I lay the further off from them, but knew not
where your Excellence was, nor how to come to you.

After much more discourse upon this subject, Captain Parkes pressing it
against Minnes, who answered well for himself, and showed that he was the
better seaman in this action and in most others, and in regard of the
cause of rejoicing which God had given them, and that they now were near
the end o