“We could fall in with nothing that would stay for us upon the seas,” said Captain Walker, modestly; but, in spite of this, he was treated like a great hero. All the influential persons in the Colony offered to sign a request that he might be given the command of a king’s ship; but this he declined. So they tendered him an immense tract of land if he would remain in that country and drive off the pirates when next they became too bold and daring; but this he also declined, and stuck to his ship. In a few weeks he sailed for the Barbadoes, and then to England, in company with three unarmed trading-vessels which placed themselves under his convoy. The good people of Charleston bade him a sad and affectionate farewell.
George Walker sailed forth smiling, but he was now to have far more trouble than his little affair with the pirates.
When half way to England, a terrific gale struck the Duke William and her convoys, which separated them by many miles, and made this good vessel (which had dispersed the pirates) leak like a sieve. The gale continued in its violence, while Captain Walker was so ill that the ship’s surgeon despaired of his life. But note how grit and nerve pulled him through!
On the second day of the tempest, a sailor rushed into his cabin, crying:
“Captain! Captain! We’ll founder, for the water is pouring into our bottom by the hogshead. We’re gone for unless we take to the boats!”
Captain Walker was not the man to leave his ship in such a crisis.
“Throw all of the guns overboard, but two!” he ordered. “We need those in order to signal for help if a vessel comes near us. That will lighten us so that we can still float awhile.”
This was done, but, as the last cannon shot into the waves, a sailor burst into his cabin with the intelligence that the men had prepared to desert in the tenders.
“Carry me on deck!” roared the resolute captain. “I’ll give these cowards a piece of my mind.”
Three sailors seized him and bore him aloft, where he remonstrated with his men in the strongest language possible. In spite of this, many clustered about one of the boats.