At Cayboa, the men took in water and cut wood, killing alligators, and salting deer and turtle. Here two "remarkable events" happened to Ringrose. In the first place, he ate an oyster so large that he found it necessary to cut it into four large mouthfuls: secondly, as he was washing himself in a pond, some drops fell on him from a mançanilla tree, and these drops broke out into a red eruption that lasted a week. Here Sharp burnt one of his prizes for the sake of the iron work, and received Captain Cook, whose men had revolted, on board his own ship, making John Cox, a New Englander, commander in his stead.
Sharp now determined to careen at the island of Gorgona, and then to proceed to Guayaquil, where Captain Juan, the captain of the Tavoga money ship, assured them they might throw away their silver and lade with gold. They selected Gorgona, because, on account of the perpetual rain, the Spaniards seldom touched there. The sailors, who had lost their money at gambling, were impatient of these delays, and declared that the Spaniards would now gain time, and the whole coast be alarmed, and on the defensive. But the richer men, wanting rest, decided for Gorgona.
In this island, they fished their mainmast, shot at whales, killed monkeys, snakes, and turtle for food, being short of provision, caught a large sloth, and killed a serpent, fourteen inches thick, and twelve feet long. While moored here, Joseph Gabriel, the Chilian, who stole the Indian king's daughter, died of a malignant calenture. He had been very faithful, and discovered many plots and conspiracies among the prisoners of intended escapes and murders.
Sharp now abandoned the design on Guayaquil, and resolved to attack Arica, the dépôt of all the Potosi plate. An old man who had served much with the Spaniards, promised them £2000 a-man.
After a fortnight's sail they arrived at the island of Plate, so called from Drake dividing his plunder there among his men. The Spaniards had a tradition, that he took twelve score tons of plate in the galleon armada, and that each of his forty-five men had sixteen bowls full of coined money—his ships being so full that they were obliged to throw much of it overboard. In the adjoining bay of Manta, in Cromwell's time, a Lima vessel, laden with thirty millions of dollars, on its way as a present to Charles I., was lost by keeping too near the shore. While catching goats on this island, on which the cross of the first Spanish discoverer still stood, they were joined by Captain Cox, whom they had lost a fortnight before, as they feared, irrecoverably. They killed and salted on this island 100 goats in a day, and one man alone, in a few hours, in one small bay turned seventeen turtle. Peralta congratulated them on getting as far to windward in two weeks as the Spanish captains did in three months, from their keeping boldly so far from the shore.
While passing Guayaquil, they espied a Spanish vessel and gave chase. Being hailed in Spanish by an Indian prisoner, to lower their topsails, the enemy replied they would pull down the Englishman's first, and answered with their arquebuses to the Buccaneers' muskets, till, one bullet killing the man at the helm and another cutting their maintop halliards, they cried out for quarter. There were thirty-five men on board, including twenty-four Spaniards and several persons of quality. The captain's brother, since the death of Don Jacinto de Barahona at Panama, was admiral of the armada. The Buccaneers' rigging was much cut during the fight, and two men were wounded, besides a sailor who was shot by an accident. The captain, it appears, had in a bravado sworn to attack their fleet if he could meet it. The Spaniard, a very "civil and meek gentleman," informed them that the governor of Lima, hearing of their visit to Panama, had collected five ships and 750 sailors; while two other vessels and 400 soldiers, furnished by the viceroy, were preparing to start. A patache with twenty-four guns was also lying at Callao, ready to remove the king's plate from Arica. At Guayaquil they had built two forts, and mustered 850 men of all colours. The same day the English unrigged their new prize and sank her.
Reckoning up the pillage, they found they had now 3,276 pieces of eight, which were at once divided. The same day they punished a Spanish friar, who was chaplain in the last prize, and, shooting him on the deck, flung him overboard before he was dead. "Such cruelties," says Ringrose, "though I abhorred very much in my heart, yet here I was forced to hold my tongue and not contradict them, as having no authority to oversway them." The prisoners now confessed they had killed a boat full of the Buccaneers' men, lost near Cayboa, and had discovered from the only survivor the plan on Guayaquil.
Captain Cox's vessel being so slow as to require towing, they sank it, so there were now 140 men and boys and fifty-five prisoners in one and the same bottom. While to the leeward of Tumbes, Peralta told them a legend of a priest having once landed there in the face of 10,000 Indians, who stared at his uplifted cross. As he stepped out of his boat on the shore, before the water could efface his footprints, two lions and two tigers came out of the woods to meet him, but when he gently laid the cross on their backs, they fell down and worshipped it, upon which all the Indians came forward and were baptised.
The night they passed Paita they espied a sail and gave chase, following it by the lights which it showed through negligence. Scantiness of provisions made them more eager in the pursuit, and coming up the Spaniard instantly lowered all her sails and surrendered. The Buccaneers casting dice as to who should first board, the lot fell to the larboard watch. The vessel contained fifty packs of cocoa, and a great deal of raw silk and India cloth, besides many bales of thread stockings. The prize being plundered and dismasted, the prisoners were turned adrift in it, supplied with only a foresail, some water, and a little flour. The chief prisoners, as Don Thomas de Argandona, commander of the Guayaquil vessel, and his friends Don Christoval and Don Baltazar, gentlemen of quality, Captain Peralta, Moreno, a pilot, and twelve slaves, to do the drudgery, were still kept. The next day the sailor wounded in taking the Guayaquil vessel, died, and was buried with ceremony, three French volleys being fired as the body was let down into the deep.
Their next expedition was to attack Arica with 112 men, first sending five boats to capture some fishermen at the river of Juan Diaz, whom they might employ as spies.