A General History of the Pirates: From Their First Rise and Settlement in the Islands of Providence to the Present Time by Captain Charles Johnson

Author:Captain Charles Johnson
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Pirates -- Early works to 1800
Publisher: Standard Ebooks
Published: 2023-03-30T20:17:28+00:00

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Upon this coast our rovers cruis’d for about nine weeks, keep­ing gen­er­ally out of sight of land, but without see­ing a sail, which dis­cour­ag’d them so, that they de­term­ined to leave the sta­tion, and steer for the West In­dies, and in or­der thereto, stood in to make the land for the tak­ing of their de­par­ture, and thereby they fell in, un­ex­pec­tedly, with a fleet of 42 sail of Por­tuguese ships, off the Bay of los To­dos San­tos, with all their lad­ing in for Lis­bon, sev­er­al of them of good force, who lay too wait­ing for two men-of-war of 70 guns each, their con­voy. How­ever, Roberts thought it should go hard with him, but he would make up his mar­ket among them, and thereupon mix’d with the fleet, and kept his men hid till prop­er res­ol­u­tions could be form’d; that done, they came close up to one of the deep­est, and ordered her to send the mas­ter on board quietly, threat’ning to give them no quar­ters, if any res­ist­ance, or sig­nal of dis­tress was made. The Por­tuguese be­ing sur­prised at these threats, and the sud­den flour­ish of cut­lashes from the pir­ates, sub­mit­ted without a word, and the cap­tain came on board; Roberts sa­luted him after a friendly man­ner, telling him, that they were gen­tle­men of for­tune, but that their busi­ness with him, was only to be in­formed which was the richest ship in that fleet; and if he dir­ec­ted them right, he should be re­stored to his ship without mo­lesta­tion, oth­er­wise, he must ex­pect im­me­di­ate death.

Whereupon this Por­tuguese mas­ter poin­ted to one of 40 guns, and 150 men, a ship of great­er force than the Rover, but this no ways dis­mayed them, they were Por­tuguese, they said, and so im­me­di­ately steered away for him. When they came with­in hail, the mas­ter whom they had pris­on­er, was ordered to ask, how Sei­gnior Capi­tain did? And to in­vite him on board, for that he had a mat­ter of con­sequence to im­part to him, which be­ing done, he re­turned for an­swer, that he would wait upon him presently: but by the bustle that im­me­di­ately fol­lowed, the pir­ates per­ceived, they were dis­covered, and that this was only a de­ceit­ful an­swer to gain time to put their ship in a pos­ture of de­fence; so without fur­ther delay, they poured in a broad­side, boarded and grappled her; the dis­pute was short and warm, wherein many of the Por­tuguese fell, and two only of the pir­ates. By this time the fleet was alarmed, sig­nals of top­gal­lant sheets fly­ing, and guns fired, to give no­tice to the men-of-war, who rid still at an an­chor, and made but scurvy haste out to their as­sist­ance; and if what the pir­ates them­selves re­lated, be true, the com­mand­ers of those ships were blame­able to the highest de­gree, and un­worthy the title, or so much as the name of men: for Roberts find­ing the prize to sail heavy, and yet resolv­ing not to loose her, lay by for the head­most of them

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