only took him down from the tree, where he was hanging
by one hand.

However just our men thought this action, I was against them in it, and I
always, after that time, told them God would blast the voyage; for I
looked upon all the blood they shed that night to be murder in them. For
though it is true that they had killed Tom Jeffry, yet Jeffry was the
aggressor, had broken the truce, and had ill-used a young woman of
theirs, who came down to them innocently, and on the faith of the public
capitulation.

The boatswain defended this quarrel when we were afterwards on board. He
said it was true that we seemed to break the truce, but really had not;
and that the war was begun the night before by the natives themselves,
who had shot at us, and killed one of our men without any just
provocation; so that as we were in a capacity to fight them now, we might
also be in a capacity to do ourselves justice upon them in an
extraordinary manner; that though the poor man had taken a little liberty
with the girl, he ought not to have been murdered, and that in such a
villainous manner: and that they did nothing but what was just and what
the laws of God allowed to be done to murderers. One would think this
should have been enough to have warned us against going on shore amongst
the heathens and barbarians; but it is impossible to make mankind wise
but at their own expense, and their experience seems to be always of most
use to them when it is dearest bought.

We were now bound to the Gulf of Persia, and from thence to the coast of
Coromandel, only to touch at Surat; but the chief of the supercargo's
design lay at the Bay of Bengal, where, if he missed his business outward-
bound, he was to go out to China, and return to the coast as he came
home. The first disaster that befell us was in the Gulf of Persia, where
five of our men, venturing on shore on the Arabian side of the gulf, were
surrounded by the Arabians, and either all killed or carried away into
slavery; the rest of the boat's crew were not able to rescue them, and
had but just time to get off their boat. I began to upbraid them with
the just retribution of Heaven in this case; but the boatswain very
warmly told me, he thought I went further in my censures than I could
show any warrant for in Scripture; and referred to Luke xiii. 4, where
our Saviour intimates that those men on whom the Tower of Siloam fell
were not sinners above all the Galileans; but that which put