WILLIAM'S DREAM, AND STRANGE ADVENTURE

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CHAPTER XIII.

WILLIAM'S DREAM, AND STRANGE ADVENTURE IN CONSEQUENCE THEREOF JOIN CAPTAIN WILMOT AT MANGAHELLY-CAPTAIN AVERY JOINS US-DISSENSIONS ARISE AMONGST US-WE PART COMPANY, AND I LEAVE THEM, HAVING THE GREAT SHIP UNDER MY COMMAND-OCCURRENCES OF OUR VOYAGE.

THERE was none with me at the taking this prize, but the sloop; for Captain Wilmot's ship proving leaky, he went away for the rendezvous before us, and arrived there the middle of December; but not liking the port, he left a great cross on shore, with directions written on a plate of lead fixed to it, for us to come after him to the great bay at Mangahelly, where we found a very good harbour; but we learned a piece of news here, that kept us from him a great while, which the admiral took offence at; but we stopped his mouth with his share of two hundred thousand pieces of eight to him and his ship's crew. But the story which interrupted our coming to him was this. Between Mangahelly, and another point, called Cape St. Sebastian, there came on shore, in the night, an European ship; and whether stress of weather, or want of a pilot, I know not, but the ship stranded, and could not be got off.

We lay in the cove, or harbour, where, as I have said, our rendezvous was appointed, and had not yet been on shore; so we had not seen the directions our admiral had left for us.

Our friend William, of whom I have said nothing a great while, had a great mind one day to go on shore, and importuned me to let him have a little troop to go with him, for safety, that they might see the country. I was mightily against it for many reasons; but particularly I told him, he knew the natives were but savages, and they were very treacherous, and I desired him that he would not go; and, had he gone on much farther, I believe I should have downright refused him, and commanded him not to go.

But, in order to persuade me to let him go, he told me, he would give me an account of the reason why he was so im

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portunate. He told me, the last night he had a dream, which was so forcible, and made such an impression upon his mind, that he could not be quiet till he had made the proposal to me to go; and, if I refused him, then he thought his dream was significant; and if not, then his dream was at an end.

His dream was, he said, that he went on shore with thirty men, of which the cockswain, he said, was one, upon the island; and that they found a mine of gold, and enriched them all. But this was not the main thing, he said; but that the same morning he had dreamed so, the cockswain came to him just then, and told him, that he dreamed he went on shore on the island of Madagascar, and that some men came to him, and told him they would show him where he could get a prize which would make them all rich.

These two things put together began to weigh with me a little, thongh I was never inclined to give any heed to dreams; but William's importunity turned me effectually; for I always put a great deal of stress upon his judgment; so that, in short, I gave them leave to go; but I charged them not to go far off from the sea-coast; that, if they were forced down to the sea-side upon any occasion, we might perhaps see them, and fetch them off with our boats.

They went away early in the morning, one-and-thirty men of them in number, very well armed, and very stout fellows: they travelled all the day, and at night made us a signal that all was well, from the top of a hill, which we had agreed on, by making a great fire.

Next day they marched down the hill, on the other side, inclining towards the sea-side, as they had promised, and saw a very pleasant valley before them, with a river in the middle of it, which, a little farther below them, seemed to be big enough to bear small ships: they marched apace towards this river, and were surprised with the noise of a piece going off; which, by the sound, could not be far off: they listened long, but could hear no more, so they went on to the riverside, which was a very fine fresh stream, but widened apace; and they kept on by the banks of it, till, almost at once, it opened or widened into a good large creek, or harbour, about five miles from the sea; and that which was still more surprising, as they marched forward, they plainly saw, in the mouth of the harbour, or creek, the wreck of a ship.

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The tide was up, as we call it, so that it did not appear very much above the water; but, as they made downwards, they found it grow bigger and bigger; and the tide soon after ebbing out, they found it lay dry upon the sands, and appeared to be the wreck of a considerable vessel, larger than could be expected in that country.

After some time, William, taking out his glass, to look at it more nearly, was surprised with hearing a musket-shot whistle by him; and, immediately after that, he heard the gun, and saw the smoke from the other side; upon which our men immediately fired three muskets, to discover, if possible, what or who they were. Upon the noise of these guns, abundance of men came running down to the shore, from among the trees; and our men could easily perceive that they were Europeans, though they knew not of what nation; however, our men hallooed to them as loud as they could; and by and by they got a long pole, and set it up, and hung a white shirt upon it for a flag of truce. They, on the other side, saw it, by the help of their glasses too; and quickly after, our men saw a boat launch off from shore, as they thought; but it was from another creek, it seems; and immediately they came rowing over the creek to our men, carrying also a white flag as a token of truce.

It is not easy to describe the surprise, or joy and satisfac tion, that appeared on both sides, to see not only white men, but Englishmen, in a place so remote; but what then must it be, when they came to know one another, to find that they were not only countrymen, but comrades; and that this was the very ship that Captain Wilmot, our admiral, commanded, and whose company we had lost in the storm at Tobago, after making an agreement to rendezvous at Madagascar !

They had, it seems, got intelligence of us, when they came to the south part of the island, and had been a roving as far as the gulf of Bengal, when they met Captain Avery, with whom they joined, took several rich prizes, and, amongst the rest, one ship with the Great Mogul's daughter, and an immense treasure in money and jewels; and from thence they came about the coast of Coromandel, and afterwards that of Malabar, into the gulf of Persia, where they also took some prize, and then designed for the south part of Mada gascar; but the winds blowing hard at S.E. and S.E. by E., they came to the northward of the isle, and being, after that,

separated by a furious tempest from the N.W., they were forced into the mouth of that creek, where they lost their ship. And they told us also, that they heard that Captain Avery himself had lost his ship also, not far off.

When they had thus acquainted one another with their fortunes, the poor overjoyed men were in haste to go back to communicate their joy to their comrades; and leaving some of their men with ours, the rest went back; and William was so earnest to see them, that he and two more went back with them; and there he came to their little camp, where they lived. There were about a hundred and sixty men of them in all: they had got their guns on shore, and some ammunition; but a good deal of their powder was spoiled; however, they had raised a fair platform, and mounted twelve pieces of cannon upon it, which was a sufficient defence to them on that side of the sea; and just at the end of the platform they had made a launch, and a little yard, and were all hard at work, building another little ship, as I may call it, to go to sea in; but they put a stop to this work upon the news they had of our being come in.

When our men went into their huts, it was surprising indeed to see the vast stock of wealth they had got, in gold, and silver, and jewels, which, however, they told us was a trifle to what Captain Avery had, wherever he was gone,

It was five days we had waited for our men, and no news of them; and indeed I gave them over for lost; but was surprised, after five days waiting, to see a ship's boat come rowing towards us along shore. What to make of it I could not tell, but was at last better satisfied, when our men told me they heard them halloo, and saw them wave their caps

to us.

In a little time they came quite up to us; and I saw friend William stand in the boat, and make signs to us so they came on board; but when I saw there were but fifteen of our one-and-thirty men, I asked what was become of their fellows: O, says William, they are all very well; and my dream is fully made good, and the cockswain's too.

This made me very impatient to know how the case stood: so he told us the whole story, which, indeed surprised us all. The next day we weighed, and stood away southerly to join Captain Wilmot, and his ship, at Mangahelly, where we found him, as I said, a little chagrined at our stay; but we

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pacified him afterwards with telling him the history of William's dream, and the consequence of it.

In the mean time, the camp of our comrades was so near Mangahelly, that our admiral, and I, friend William, and some of the men, resolved to take the sloop, and go and see them, and fetch them all, and their goods, bag and baggage, on board our ship, which accordingly we did, and found their camp, their fortifications, the battery of guns they had erected, their treasure, and all the men, just as William had related it; so, after some stay, we took all the men into the sloop, and brought them away with us.

It was some time before we knew what was become of Captain Avery; but after about a month, by the direction of the men who had lost their ship, we sent the sloop to cruise along the shore, to find out, if possible, where they were; and in about a week's cruise, our men found them; and particularly, that they had lost their ship, as well as our men had lost theirs, and that they were every way in as bad a condition as ours.

It was about ten days before the sloop returned, and Captain Avery with them; and this was the whole force that, as I remember, Captain Avery ever had with him; for now we joined all our companies together, and it stood thus: we had two ships and a sloop, in which we had three hundred and twenty men, but much too few to man them as they ought to be; the great Portuguese ship requiring of herself near four hundred men to man her completely. As for our lost, but now found, comrade, her complement of men was one hundred and eighty, or thereabouts; and Captain Avery had about three hundred men with him, whereof he had ten carpenters with him, most of which were found aboard the prize they had taken; so that, in a word, all the force Avery had at Madagascar, in the year 1699, or thereabouts, amounted to our three ships, for his own was lost, as you have heard, and never had any more than about twelve hundred men in all.

It was about a month after this, that all our crews got together; and, as Avery was unshipped, we all agreed to bring our own company into the Portuguese man-of-war and the sloop, and give Captain Avery the Spanish frigate, with all the tackles and furniture, guns and ammunition, for his crew by themselves; for which they, being full of wealth, agreed to give us forty thousand pieces of eight.