Hately Was Well Able To Conduct Them To Some Port
In The East Indies.
This plan was accordingly resolved on, and they fell
to leeward of the place of rendezvous.
But, weighing with himself the
prodigious extent of the run, and its many hazards, and well knowing the
treatment he might expect in India, if his treachery were discovered,
Captain Hately became irresolute, and could not determine what was best
to be done, so that he kept hovering on the coast. In the mean time,
some of his crew went away in his boat to surrender themselves to the
enemy, rather than be concerned in such a piratical undertaking. Betagh
and his accomplices still kept Hately warm with liquor, and at length
brought him to the resolution of leaving the South Sea. But they had no
sooner clapped their helm a-weather for this purpose than they saw a
sail standing towards them, which proved to be a Spanish man of war,
which caught them, and spoilt their India voyage. The English prisoners
were very indifferently used; but Betagh, being a Roman Catholic, and of
a nation which the Spaniards are very fond of,[267] was treated with
much respect, and was even made an officer.
[Footnote 267: He seems to have been a Fleming, taken on board at
Ostend, when the voyage was originally intended to have proceeded under
an imperial commission. - E.]
In the morning of the 29th February, we saw a vessel at anchor in the
road of Guanchaeo, and anchored alongside of her at eleven a.m. She
was called the Carmasita, of about 100 tons, having only two Indian men
and a boy on board, and her only loading was a small quantity of timber
from Guayaquil. From these prisoners, I was informed of a rich ship
being in the cove of Payta, having put in there to repair some damage
she had sustained in a gale of wind. On this information I put
immediately to sea, but in purchasing our anchor, the cable parted, and
we lost our anchor. Our prize being new and likely to sail well, I took
her with us, naming her the St David, designing to have made her a
complete fire-ship as soon as we should be rejoined by the Mercury, in
which there were materials for that purpose. Next day we looked into
Cheripe, whence we chased a small vessel, which ran on shore to avoid
us. Next morning, being near Lobos, our appointed rendezvous with the
Mercury, I sent ashore my second lieutenant, Mr Randal, with two letters
in separate bottles, directing Captain Hately to follow me to Payta, to
which port I now made the best of my way, and arrived before it on the
18th of March, and sent Mr Randal to look into the cove, to bring me an
account of what ships were there, that I might know what to think of the
information we had received from our prisoners.
On the 21st, I steered directly in for the cove of Payta, which I
entered under French colours about four in the afternoon.
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