ts
for the kindness shown them, was wanting; the French, it is known, are
naturally apt enough to exceed that way. The captain and one of the
priests came to me the next day, and desired to speak with me and my
nephew; the commander began to consult with us what should be done with
them; and first, they told us we had saved their lives, so all they had
was little enough for a return to us for that kindness received. The
captain said they had saved some money and some things of value in their
boats, caught hastily out of the flames, and if we would accept it they
were ordered to make an offer of it all to us; they only desired to be
set on shore somewhere in our way, where, if possible, they might get a
passage to France. My nephew wished to accept their money at first word,
and to consider what to do with them afterwards; but I overruled him in
that part, for I knew what it was to be set on shore in a strange
country; and if the Portuguese captain that took me up at sea had served
me so, and taken all I had for my deliverance, I must have been starved,
or have been as much a slave at the Brazils as I had been at Barbary, the
mere being sold to a Mahometan excepted; and perhaps a Portuguese is not
a much better master than a Turk, if not in some cases much worse.

I therefore told the French captain that we had taken them up in their
distress, it was true, but that it was our duty to do so, as we were
fellow-creatures; and we would desire to be so delivered if we were in
the like or any other extremity; that we had done nothing for them but
what we believed they would have done for us if we had been in their case
and they in ours; but that we took them up to save them, not to plunder
them; and it would be a most barbarous thing to take that little from
them which they had saved out of the fire, and then set them on shore and
leave them; that this would be first to save them from death, and then
kill them ourselves: save them from drowning, and abandon them to
starving; and therefore I would not let the least thing be taken from
them. As to setting them on shore, I told them indeed that was an
exceeding difficulty to us, for that the ship was bound to the East
Indies; and though we were driven out of our course to the westward a
very great way, and perhaps were directed by Heaven on purpose for their
deliverance, yet it was impossible for us wilfully to change our voyage
on their particular account; nor could my nephew