at once tacked about so as to engage her,
intending to sweep her decks with bullets, and carry her by boarding.
John Watling was not very willing to come to handystrokes, nor were the
Spaniards anxious to give him the opportunity. No guns were fired, for
the Spanish admiral wore ship, and so sailed away to the island, when he
brought his squadron to anchor. The pirates called a council, and
decided to give them the slip, having "outbraved them," and done as much
as honour called for. They were not very pleased with John Watling, and
many were clamouring for the cruise to end. It was decided that they
should not attack the Spanish ships, but go off for the Main, to sack
the town of Arica, where there was gold enough, so they had heard, to
buy them each "a coach and horses." They therefore hauled to the wind
again, and stood to the east, in very angry and mutinous spirit, until
the 26th of January.

On that day they landed at Yqueque, a mud-flat, or guano island, off a
line of yellow sand-hills. They found a few Indian huts there, with
scaffolds for the drying of fish, and many split and rotting mackerel
waiting to be carried inland. There was a dirty stone chapel in the
place, "stuck full of hides and sealskins." There was a great surf,
green and mighty, bursting about the island with a continual roaring.
There were pelicans fishing there, and a few Indians curing fish, and an
abominable smell, and a boat, with a cask in her bows, which brought
fresh water thither from thirty miles to the north. The teeth of the
Indians were dyed a bright green by their chewing of the coca leaf, the
drug which made their "beast-like" lives endurable. There was a silver
mine on the mainland, near this fishing village, but the pirates did not
land to plunder it. They merely took a few old Indian men, and some
Spaniards, and carried them aboard the _Trinity_, where the godly John
Watling examined them.

The next day the examination continued; and the answers of one of the
old men, "a Mestizo Indian," were judged to be false. "Finding him in
many lies, as we thought, concerning Arica, our commander ordered him to
be shot to death, which was accordingly done." This cold-blooded murder
was committed much against the will of Captain Sharp, who "opposed it as
much as he could." Indeed, when he found that his protests were useless,
he took a basin of water (of which the ship was in sore need) and washed
his hands, like a modern Pilate. "Gentleme