Accordingly we stood away north, but found ourselves so entangled among innumerable islands, and without any pilot that understood the channel and races between them, that we were obliged to give it over, and resolved to go back again to Banda, and see what we could get among the other islands thereabouts.
The first adventure we made here had like to have been fatal to us all, for the sloop, being ahead, made the signal to us for seeing a sail, and afterwards another, and a third, by which we understood she saw three sail; whereupon we made more sail to come up with her, but on a sudden were gotten among some rocks, falling foul upon them in such a manner as frighted us all very heartily; for having, it seems, but just water enough, as it were to an inch, our rudder struck upon the top of a rock, which gave us a terrible shock, and split a great piece off the rudder, and indeed disabled it so that our ship would not steer at all, at least not so as to be depended upon; and we were glad to hand all our sails, except our fore-sail and main-topsail, and with them we stood away to the east, to see if we could find any creek or harbour where we might lay the ship on shore, and repair our rudder; besides, we found the ship herself had received some damage, for she had some little leak near her stern-post, but a great way under water.
By this mischance we lost the advantages, whatever they were, of the three sail of ships, which we afterwards came to hear were small Dutch ships from Batavia, going to Banda and Amboyna, to load spice, and, no doubt, had a good quantity of money on board.
Upon the disaster I have been speaking of you may very well suppose that we came to an anchor as soon as we could, which was upon a small island not far from Banda, where, though the Dutch keep no factory, yet they come at the season to buy nutmegs and mace. We stayed there thirteen days; but there being no place where we could lay the ship on shore, we sent the sloop to cruise among the islands, to look out for a place fit for us. In the meantime we got very good water here, some provisions, roots, and fruits, and a good quantity of nutmegs and mace, which we found ways to trade with the natives for, without the knowledge of their masters, the Dutch.
At length our sloop returned; having found another island where there was a very good harbour, we ran in, and came to an anchor. We immediately unbent all our sails, sent them ashore upon the island, and set up seven or eight tents with them; then we unrigged our top-masts, and cut them down, hoisted all our guns out, our provisions and loading, and put them ashore in the tents. With the guns we made two small batteries, for fear of a surprise, and kept a look-out upon the hill. When we were all ready, we laid the ship aground upon a hard sand, the upper end of the harbour, and shored her up on each side. At low water she lay almost dry, so we mended her bottom, and stopped the leak, which was occasioned by straining some of the rudder irons with the shock which the ship had against the rock.
Having done this, we also took occasion to clean her bottom, which, having been at sea so long, was very foul. The sloop washed and tallowed also, but was ready before us, and cruised eight or ten days among the islands, but met with no purchase; so that we began to be tired of the place, having little to divert us but the most furious claps of thunder that ever were heard or read of in the world.
We were in hopes to have met with some purchase here among the Chinese, who, we had been told, came to Ternate to trade for cloves, and to the Banda Isles for nutmegs; and we would have been very glad to have loaded our galleon, or great ship, with these two sorts of spice, and have thought it a glorious voyage; but we found nothing stirring more than what I have said, except Dutchmen, who, by what means we could not imagine, had either a jealousy of us or intelligence of us, and kept themselves close in their ports.
I was once resolved to have made a descent at the island of Dumas, the place most famous for the best nutmegs; but friend William, who was always for doing our business without fighting, dissuaded me from it, and gave such reasons for it that we could not resist; particularly the great heats of the season, and of the place, for we were now in the latitude of just half a degree south. But while we were disputing this point we were soon determined by the following accident:—We had a strong gale of wind at S.W. by W., and the ship had fresh way, but a great sea rolling in upon us from the N.E., which we afterwards found was the pouring in of the great ocean east of New Guinea. However, as I said, we stood away large, and made fresh way, when, on the sudden, from a dark cloud which hovered over our heads, came a flash, or rather blast, of lightning, which was so terrible, and quivered so long among us, that not I only, but all our men, thought the ship was on fire. The heat of the flash, or fire, was so sensibly felt in our faces, that some of our men had blisters raised by it on their skins, not immediately, perhaps, by the heat, but by the poisonous or noxious particles which mixed themselves with the matter inflamed. But this was not all; the shock of the air, which the fracture in the clouds made, was such that our ship shook as when a broadside is fired; and her motion being checked, as it were at once, by a repulse superior to the force that gave her way before, the sails all flew back in a moment, and the ship lay, as we might truly say, thunder-struck. As the blast from the cloud was so very near us, it was but a few moments after the flash that the terriblest clap of thunder followed that was ever heard by mortals. I firmly believe a blast of a hundred thousand barrels of gunpowder could not have been greater to our hearing; nay, indeed, to some of our men it took away their hearing.
It is not possible for me to describe, or any one to conceive, the terror of that minute. Our men were in such a consternation, that not a man on board the ship had presence of mind to apply to the proper duty of a sailor, except friend William; and had he not run very nimbly, and with a composure that I am sure I was not master of, to let go the fore-sheet, set in the weather-brace of the fore-yard, and haul down the top-sails, we had certainly brought all our masts by the board, and perhaps have been overwhelmed in the sea.
As for myself, I must confess my eyes were open to my danger, though not the least to anything of application for remedy. I was all amazement and confusion, and this was the first time that I can say I began to feel the effects of that horror which I know since much more of, upon the just reflection on my former life. I thought myself doomed by Heaven to sink that moment into eternal destruction; and with this peculiar mark of terror, viz., that the vengeance was not executed in the ordinary way of human justice, but that God had taken me into His immediate disposing, and had resolved to be the executer of His own vengeance.