by Daniel Defoe
sailed, he foundmeans to get out of their hands, came down to Callao on a mule in thenight, and our surgeon, lying ready with our boat about half a leaguefrom the town, as by appointment, took him on board, with a negro, hisservant, and brought him safe to the ship; nor had we received him onboard half an hour, but, being unmoored and ready to sail, we put out tosea, and carried him clear off.
He made his excuses to me that he was come away naked, according to hisprofession; that he had purposed to have furnished himself with someprovisions for the voyage, but that the unexpected suspicions of thehead of their college, or house, had obliged him to come away in amanner that would not admit of it; for that he might rather be said tohave made his escape than to have come fairly off.
I told him he was very welcome (and indeed so he was, for he had beenalready more worth to us than ten times his passage came to), and thathe should be entered into immediate pay, as physician to both the ships,which I was sure none of our surgeons would repine at, but rather beglad of; and accordingly I immediately ordered him a cabin, with a verygood apartment adjoining to it, and appointed him to eat in my own messwhenever he pleased, or by himself, on his particular days, when hethought proper.
And now it was impossible to conceal from him that we were indeed anEnglish ship, and that I was the captain in chief, except, as has beensaid, upon occasion of coming to any particular town of Spain. I let himknow I had a commission to make prize of the Spaniards, and appear theiropen enemy, but that I had chosen to treat them as friends, in a way ofcommerce, as he had seen. He admired much the moderation I had used, andhow I had avoided enriching myself with the spoil, as I might have done;and he made me many compliments upon that head, which I excused hearing,and begged him to forbear. I told him we were Christians, and as we hadmade a very prosperous voyage, I was resolved not to do any honest manthe least injustice, if I could avoid it.
But I must observe here, that I did not enter immediately into all thisconfidence with him neither, nor all at once; neither did I let him intoany part of it, but under the same solemn engagements of secrecy that hehad laid upon us, nor till I was come above eighty leagues south fromLima.
The first thing I took the freedom to speak to him upon was this.Finding his habit a little offensive to our rude seamen, I took him intothe cabin the very next day after we came to sea, and told him that Iwas obliged to mention to him what I knew he would soon perceive;namely, that we were all Protestants, except three or four of theFrenchmen, and I did not know how agreeable that might be to him. Heanswered, he was not at all offended with that part; that it was none ofhis business to inquire into any one's opinion any farther than theygave him leave; that if it was his business to cure the souls of men onshore, his business on board was to cure their bodies; and as for therest, he would exercise no other function than that of a physician onboard the ship without my leave.
I told him that was very obliging; but that for his own sake I had aproposal to make him, which was, whether it would be disagreeable tohim to lay aside the habit of a religious, and put on that of agentleman, so to accommodate himself the more easily to the men onboard, who perhaps might be rude to him in his habit, seamen being notalways men of the most refined manners.
He thanked me very sincerely; told me that he had been in England aswell as in Ireland, and that he went dressed there as a gentleman, andwas ready to do so now, if I thought fit, to avoid giving any offence;and added that he chose to do so. But then, smiling, said he was at agreat loss, for he had no clothes. I bade him take no care about that,for I would furnish him; and immediately we dressed him up like anEnglishman, in a suit of very good clothes, which belonged to one of ourmidshipmen who died. I gave him also a good wig and a sword, and hepresently appeared upon the quarter-deck like a grave physician, and wascalled doctor.
From that minute, by whose contrivance we knew not, it went currentamong the seamen that the Spanish doctor was an Englishman and aprotestant, and only had put on the other habit to disguise himself andmake his escape to us; and this was so universally believed that it heldto the last day of the whole voyage, for as soon as I knew it, I tookcare that nobody should ever contradict it: and as for the doctorhimself, when he first heard of it, he said nothing could be more to hissatisfaction, and that he would take care to confirm the opinion of itamong all the men, as far as lay in his power.
However, the doctor earnestly desired we would be mindful, that as heshould never offer to go on shore, whatever port we came to afterwards,none of the Spaniards might, by inquiry, hear upon any occasion of hisbeing on board our ship; but above all, that none of our men, theofficers especially, would ever come so much in reach of the Spaniardson shore as to put it in their power to seize upon them by reprisal, andso oblige us to deliver him up by way of exchange.
I went so far with him, and so did Captain Merlotte also, as to assurehim, that if the Spaniards should by any stratagem, or by force, get anyof our men, nay, though it were ourselves, into their hands, yet heshould, upon no conditions whatever be delivered up. And indeed for thisvery reason we were very shy of going on shore at all; and as we hadreally no business any where but just for water and fresh provisions,which we had also taken in a very good store of at Lima, so we put innowhere at all on the coast of Peru, because there we might have beenmore particularly liable to the impertinencies of the Spaniard'sinquiry; as to force, we were furnished not to be in the leastapprehensive of that.
Being thus, I say, resolved to have no more to do with the coast ofPeru, we stood off to sea, and the first land we made was a littleunfrequented island in the latitude of 17 deg. 13', where our men went onshore in the boats three or four times, to catch tortoises or turtles,being the first we had met with since we came from the East Indies. Andhere they took so many, and had such a prodigious quantity of eggs outof them, that the whole company of both ships lived on them till withinfour or five days of our coming to the island of Juan Fernandez, whichwas our next port. Some of these tortoises were so large and so heavythat no single man could turn them, and sometimes as much as four mencould carry to the boats.
We met with some bad weather after this, which blew us off to sea, thewind blowing very hard at the south-east; but it was not so great a windas to endanger us, though we lost sight of one another more in thisstorm than we had done in all our voyage. However, we were none of us inany great concern for it now, because we had agreed before, that if weshould lose one another, we should make the best of our way to theisland of Juan Fernandez; and this we observed now so directly, thatboth of us shaping our course for the island, as soon as the stormabated, came in sight of one another long before we came thither, whichproved very agreeable to us all.
We were, including the time of the storm, two hundred and eighteen daysfrom Lima to the Island of Juan Fernandez, having most of the time crosscontrary winds, and more bad weather than is usual in those seas;however, we were all in good condition, both ships and men.
Here we fell to the old trade of hunting of goats. And here our newdoctor set some of our men to simpling, that is to say, to gather somephysical herbs, which he let them see afterwards were very well worththeir while. Our surgeons assisted, and saw the plants, but had neverobserved the same kind in England. They gave me the names of them, andit is the only discovery in all my travels which I have not reserved socarefully as to publish for the advantage of others, and which I regretthe omission of very much.
While we were here, an odd accident gave me some uneasiness, which,however, did not come to much. Early in the grey of the morning, littlewind, and a smooth sea, a small frigate-built vessel, under Spanishcolours, pennant flying, appeared off at sea, at the opening of thenorth-east point of the island. As soon as she came fair with the road,she lay by, as if she came to look into the port only; and when sheperceived that we began to loose our sails to speak with her, shestretched away to the northward, and then altering her course, stoodaway north-east, using oars to assist her, and so she got away.
Nothing could be more ev
ident to us than that she came to look at us,nor could we imagine anything less; from whence we immediately concludedthat we were discovered, and that our taking away the doctor had given agreat alarm among the Spaniards, as we afterwards came to understand ithad done. But we came a little while afterwards to a betterunderstanding about the frigate.
I was so uneasy about it, that I resolved to speak with her if possible,so I ordered the Madagascar ship, which of the two, was rather a bettersailer than our own, to stand in directly to the coast of Chili, andthen to ply to the northward, just in sight of the shore, till he cameinto the latitude of 22 deg.; and, if he saw nothing in all that run, thento come down again directly into the latitude of the island of JuanFernandez, but keeping the distance of ten leagues off farther thanbefore, and to ply off and on in that latitude for five days; and then,if he did not meet with me, to stand in for the island.
While he did this, I did the same at the distance of near fifty leaguesfrom the shore,