make them all friends; that, for his part, he would live and die with
them, and was so far from designing anything against the Spaniards, that
he owned they had done nothing to him but what his own mad humour made
necessary, and what he would have done, and perhaps worse, in their case;
and that he would ask them pardon, if I desired it, for the foolish and
brutish things he had done to them, and was very willing and desirous of
living in terms of entire friendship and union with them, and would do
anything that lay in his power to convince them of it; and as for going
to England, he cared not if he did not go thither these twenty years.

The Spaniards said they had, indeed, at first disarmed and excluded Will
Atkins and his two countrymen for their ill conduct, as they had let me
know, and they appealed to me for the necessity they were under to do so;
but that Will Atkins had behaved himself so bravely in the great fight
they had with the savages, and on several occasions since, and had showed
himself so faithful to, and concerned for, the general interest of them
all, that they had forgotten all that was past, and thought he merited as
much to be trusted with arms and supplied with necessaries as any of
them; that they had testified their satisfaction in him by committing the
command to him next to the governor himself; and as they had entire
confidence in him and all his countrymen, so they acknowledged they had
merited that confidence by all the methods that honest men could merit to
be valued and trusted; and they most heartily embraced the occasion of
giving me this assurance, that they would never have any interest
separate from one another.

Upon these frank and open declarations of friendship, we appointed the
next day to dine all together; and, indeed, we made a splendid feast. I
caused the ship's cook and his mate to come on shore and dress our
dinner, and the old cook's mate we had on shore assisted. We brought on
shore six pieces of good beef and four pieces of pork, out of the ship's
provisions, with our punch-bowl and materials to fill it; and in
particular I gave them ten bottles of French claret, and ten bottles of
English beer; things that neither the Spaniards nor the English had
tasted for many years, and which it may be supposed they were very glad
of. The Spaniards added to our feast five whole kids, which the cooks
roasted; and three of them were sent, covered up close, on board the ship
to t