ice
to bring him away; so they left him where they found him, only took him
down from the tree where he was hanged by one hand.

However just our men thought this action to be, I was against them in
it, and I always after that time told them God would blast the voyage;
for I looked upon the blood they shed that night to be murder in them:
for though it is true that they killed Thomas Jeffrys, yet it was as
true that Jeffrys was the aggressor, had broken the truce, and had
violated or debauched a young woman of theirs, who came to our camp
innocently, and on the faith of their 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, we might
also be in a capacity to do ourselves justice upon them in an
extraordinary manner; that though the poor man had taken liberty with a
wench, he ought not to have been murdered, and that in such a villanous
manner; and that they did nothing but what was just, and that 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 among heathens and barbarians; but it is impossible to
make mankind wise but at their own experience; 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 of the business
outward-bound he was to go up to China, and return to the coast as he
came home.

The first disaster that befel 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 Arabs, 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 farther in my censures than I could
show any warrant for in Scripture, and referred to the thirteenth of St.
Luke, ver. 4, where our Saviour intimates that those men on whom