ched about the "funk of green-wood," shivering in the smoke, chewing
bullets to alleviate their hunger. They slept there in great misery,
careless of what happened to them. "The Spaniards were but seldom in our
thoughts," says Dampier, for the pirates thought only of guides and
food, and feared their own Indian servants more than the enemy. A watch
of two pirates kept a guard all that night, with orders to shoot any
Indian who showed a sign of treachery. They rose before it was light and
pushed on into the woods, biting on the bullet, or the quid, to help
them to forget their hunger. By ten o'clock they arrived at the house of
a brisk young Indian, who had been a servant to the Bishop of Panama,
the man who gave the gold ring to Sawkins. Here they had a feast of yams
and sweet potatoes, boiled into a broth with monkey-meat, a great
comfort to those who were weak and sickly. They built a great fire in
one of the huts, at which they dried their clothes, now falling to
pieces from the continual soakings. They also cleaned their rusty
gun-locks, and dried their powder, talking cheerily together, about the
fire, while the rain roared upon the thatch. They were close beside the
Rio Congo "and thus far," says Dampier, the most intelligent man among
them, "we might have come in our Canoa, if I could have persuaded them
to it."

As they sat in the hut, in the warmth of the blaze, that rainy May day,
Lionel Wafer met with an accident. He was sitting on the ground, beside
one of the pirates, who was drying his powder, little by little, half a
pound at a time, in a great silver dish, part of the plunder of the
cruise. "A careless Fellow passed by with his Pipe lighted," and dropped
some burning crumb of tobacco on to the powder, which at once blew up.
It scorched Wafer's knee very terribly, tearing off the flesh from the
bone, and burning his leg from the knee to the thigh. Wafer, who was the
surgeon of the party, had a bag full of salves and medicines. He managed
to dress his wounds, and to pass a fairly comfortable night, "and being
unwilling to be left behind by my Companions, I made hard shift to jog
on, and bear them Company," when camp was broken at daybreak.

Lame as he was, he kept up with his mates all that day, fording rivers
"several times," and crossing country which would tax the strongest man,
in good condition. "The last time we forded the River, it was so deep,
that our tallest Men stood in the deepest place, and ha