On The 7th Our Pinnace
Returned With Mr Vanburgh And All Our People, Having Parted From His
Majesty On Friendly Terms, But Could Not Procure A Pilot.
We resolved,
however, not to stay any longer, but to trust to Providence for our
future preservation:
Wherefore we began to unmoor our ships, and
dismissed our Portuguese linguist.
Next day, the 8th June, we made three islands to the north of
Salayer. On the 10th our pinnace came up with a small vessel, the
people on board of which said they were bound for the Dutch factory of
Macasser on the S.W. coast of Celebes. The pinnace brought away the
master of this vessel, who engaged to pilot us through the Straits of
Salayer and all the way to Batavia, if we would keep it secret from the
Dutch, and he sent his vessel to lie in the narrowest part of the
passage between the islands, till such time as our ships came up. On the
14th we passed the island of Madura, and on the 17th we made the high
land of Cheribon, which bore S.W. from us. This morning we saw a great
ship right ahead, to which I sent our pinnace for news. She was a ship
of Batavia of 600 tons and fifty guns, plying to some of the Dutch
factories for timber. Her people told us that we were still thirty Dutch
leagues from Batavia, but there was no danger by the way, and they even
supplied us with a large chart, which proved of great use to us.
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