A week later we had wooded and watered from our isle, and the wind being fair away we went, while the last piece of counsel we received came from the beastly great negro of whom I have writ before. This creature's name was Juan, he having been born at San Domingo city, a Spanish slave, which he no longer was, and as we had always thought, though we were never convinced thereof, had egged on Brooks and the others to mutiny by telling of them that we were a-fishing in the wrong pool--as anglers at home say--but that if they could take the frigate from Phips, whom he hated, he could show them where the plate really was.
So now he shouted to us from his periaga, as 'tis called there,
"Adios, Don Phipo, adios. Berry sorie, Massa, you no find platy, but you look not in proper place. You ever come back again, which not berry like, you send for Juan and pay him better, he show you many tings if he not show it someone else firsty. Adios, Don Phipo, adios cada uno, I hope you berry nice cruise to Englishy waters. Adios," and with that he hoisted his little sail and was gone.
Phips scowled at him first and then burst out a-laughing, while one of the sailors flung a musket ball at him, and so we sailed away disappointed men.
"A very nice cruise" it was not our good fortune to have, for we were teased and pestered with contrary winds and storms all the way. Then we got into the Horse latitudes--where the Spanish used to throw their horses overboard on their way to the Indie Islands, to lighten their ships so that they could move in the calm--or called by some the Doldrums--and here we lay for some weeks. There we suffered much in every way. The sea is here like glass, there is not a wind to stir a sa'l nor to refresh the panting men, and the air is like a furnace. Moreover, here the seams of a ship will yawn, the meat become rotten, and the hoops shrink away off the casks so that they burst and leak, letting out the water--of beer we had naturally none left. The sea, too, looks lyke oil and not water, while the setting of the sun gives one the idea that the whole world is a-fire. Great crimson fleaks of flames blaze all across the heavens, then tinges of saffron, green, and pink shoot up, and then comes the grey darkness, as though 'twas the smoke after the fire.
And while we who were free all this time suffered so, 'twas far worse and more terrible with the condemned mutineers, for, being down in the ballast, since there was nought for them to do on deck while we lay still, their agonies from the heat were insufferable. Five of them did die--even though at the last they were fetched above--and so 'twas better for them, since had they lived there was nought but the hanging at Spithead before them.
Thus, when at last we got a wind which took us home--and a roaring, tearing wind indeed it was, that sent us often under bare poles with fear every moment that our crazy frigate with her open seams must go to the bottom--we worked very short-handed. Yet home at last we did get, looking like scarecrows in a field, and so yellow that those who knew us said that, if we had found no silver, at least we had brought a plenty of gold on our faces. Yet right glad were we to see old England again after so long, and to sleep once more in a good English bed.
CHAPTER XII
THE BARK "FURIE."
Now I will not write down much as to how we found the state of things on our return, yet somewhat must I say.