d the letter and the sailing orders and replied that the
British prisoners were pirates. According to Captain Tosier's narrative
he refused the British emissaries the customary salute and more or less
politely ordered them out of the house. They were escorted back to the
boat and "were forced to sea at seven o'clock at night."

Early the next morning the answer was received by Captain Tosier. Within
three hours he sent the boat ashore once more, telling the governor of
Havana "His Majesty's Ship under my command is well Man'd, where he
might be safe and welcome if he would vouchsafe to give her his company;
and His Majesty of England never spared his powder to answer Civilities,
nor received such indignities as waiters or guards on board of any of
His Majesty's Ships of War, which will be a strange report, when His
Majesty shall come to hear of it." Captain Tosier then demanded in the
name of the King of England and "in obedience to the Catholic King" that
forthwith all subjects of his "most Excellent Majesty" detained as
prisoners in Havana be set at liberty and delivered to him to be
transported to the Territories of the King of England. If pirates they
were, they should have been sent to Old Spain to be tried. Great was the
excitement at the government house in Havana, when this message reached
there. But the Cuban authorities saw no other way out of the difficulty
but to give up the captives. Captain Tosier reports that the governor
ordered the prisoners to be called over in a back court near his house
and examined some of them, one after another, and before he had done
said: "Though I have no order to deliver them to you and though I may be
blamed, yet take them all with you, and if there be any more, let them
come forth immediately and they shall be discharged."

Captain Tosier had cause to be proud of his success, as the Spanish
authorities had never before been known to deliver any British
prisoners. The announcement that they were free was received with wild
cheers by the forty-six Englishmen who had spent from one to six years
in Cuban captivity. The following day the _Hunter_ sailed and at some
distance out of Havana, Captain Tosier came across a long boat,
containing one hundred and forty-four men with their commander, Captain
John Graves who had sailed a month before for London and eight days
before meeting the _Hunter_ had been cast away thirty leagues east of
Havana and expected to be utterly lost or to b