,
having been seventy-nine days in effecting a passage which has
been performed in twenty, meeting with a long series of calms
and uncertain weather. Hence we arrived five weeks too late,
and therefore hoped to speak her on her return, which generally
is in March; she would then have been laden with money to
purchase another cargo. We cruized off this port and the coast
of Mexico two months, at a distance not to be discovered from
the shore, and having intelligence, by a boat we took, of the
day of her sailing, we made no doubt of her being ours. We were
five sail in all, with our prizes, and lay at three leagues
distance from each other, and ten from the port. During this
time we lived on turtle, which we caught daily in our boats.
Our squadron described a half moon, our boats being at the same
time three leagues from the shore within us to watch the port.
The disposition was so just and regular, it was impossible she
could have escaped. I was so curious as to calculate my share,
which would have amounted to 10,000_l._; but Providence
ordained it otherwise.

"I should have told you that that ship mounted sixty guns.
Having cruised till our water was almost all expended, and
having an enemy's coast whereon to replenish, we were obliged
to depart, but left a boat behind to watch her motions. After
many searches, we found a convenient bay for watering called
Chequetan, where Sir Francis Drake had refitted. We sunk and
burnt all our prizes, in order to cross the great Southern
Ocean, and, with the Gloucester in company, go to the East
Indies. We learned afterwards that this rich ship was detained,
having had information from the coast of Peru of our being on
the coast. We left Acapulco on the 6th of May 1742; and here
begins another series of misfortunes and mortality surpassing
the first. We had a passage of three months and a half to the
Ladrone Islands, which is generally made in two; yet it was a
vulgar opinion amongst our people that we had sailed so far as
to pass by all the land in the world! Length of time and
badness of the weather rendered both our ships leaky; this,
joined to our mortality, the scurvy raging amongst us as much
as ever, obliged us to destroy the Gloucester, which ship was
ready to founder, and receive the me