Looking round and seeing only Thompson and me on deck, they sprang up as if they were about to make a desperate rush towards us, thinking of course that they could easily overcome two men.
Telling Thompson to aim at the blacks in the rigging to keep them there, I covered the foremost Frenchman with my musket. I could have killed him on the spot, but I was most unwilling to shed blood except in the very last necessity. Once more I sang out. He continued advancing.
“I have given you ample warning!” I cried out. My finger was on the trigger.
At that moment Mr Randolph, followed by Andrews and the other men, sprang on deck, and seeing the state of affairs, each of them grasping a handspike, they ran towards the Frenchmen.
The latter soon saw that their opportunity was lost. The negroes, for the sake of being more out of the way, as they fancied, of Thompson’s musket, had climbed as high as they could up the rigging, so that he was able to hold another Frenchman in check. The Frenchman nearest to me, seeing my resolute bearing, and having no fancy for throwing his life away even for the sake of his companions, very wisely backed against them, and they seeing Mr Randolph and his party advancing from forward, to avoid getting their heads broken, leaped precipitately down the hatchway, whence they had but just before emerged.
Leaving Thompson to keep the blacks aloft with his musket, I sprang to the hatchway and sang out, “We do not want to do you any harm, but if you attempt any trick, for our own sakes we must shoot every one of you!” I said this because I saw one of them striking away over a tinder-box, with the intention, I had little doubt, of trying to set the ship on fire.
Mr Randolph highly applauded me for what I had done. On looking below and seeing what the Frenchmen were about, he and Andrews, with Jones and another man, leaped down among them, and seizing the first they could lay hands on, lifted him up crop and heels to me. The move so much astonished his companions, that they did not come to his assistance; and another being treated in the same way, we had their forces divided, and very speedily brought them to terms. We first lashed the hands of the two we had on deck behind them, and made them sit down with their backs against the bulwarks on the starboard side, and then we got up the other three one by one, and placed them, bound in the same way, on the opposite side. Next we called down the blacks, and arranged them round the mainmast.
“Now, my friends, by all the laws of war you ought to be shot!” said Mr Randolph. “We treated you very kindly; we gave you of the best of everything on board, and in return you have attempted to knock us on the head, and to take the ship from us. However, it was natural that you should wish to recover what was once your own, so that if you will promise, on the honour of Frenchmen, not to make another attempt of the sort, we will allow you your freedom during the day-time, on certain conditions. Three of you must remain forward, and never come abaft the foremast unless I call you; and two must never go before the mizzen-mast; at night we must shut you all up. I warn you, also, that as surely as any one of you attempts to infringe these regulations, I will shoot him. We are very good friends; I do not bear you the slightest enmity, but our own safety demands this.”
Our prisoners shrugged their shoulders. “C’est la fortune de la guerre,” was the only answer they at first made. They most of them understood pretty clearly what Mr Randolph had said; besides, one, who understood English the best, interpreted to the rest.
Mr Randolph waited a little time. “Do you agree to my terms?” he asked.