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While thus fighting their way against fortune and the winds, they fell in with an Indian fisherman, whom they made prisoner, to procure from him information respecting the state of the coast; and they had an eye also to his fishing apparatus, as well as to the benefit of his superior skill in the art of using it; for by this time they were solely pressed by the common wants of our nature. By the Indian they were informed that the coast was clear of king’s ships—that an armed merchantman from Old Spain had arrived at Arica (a fortified town still in the hands of the loyalists) a few days before, and that she was lying under the protection of the fort, ready to discharge a valuable cargo. Their disappointment at having missed the opportunity of falling in with so rich a prize, in consequence of useless, and in other respects, hurtful delays, was extreme, for they entertained no doubt whatever, that, had they been down in time, as they would have been but for these delays, the Minerva would have been the reward of all their privations. Disappointment is not a feeling that arises in the mind, and then instantaneously passes away; it recurs again and again, to vex the spirit, and to rouse its energies to redeem the mistaken or neglected step by which it has been troubled. With the crew of the drugger-boat it operated with instantaneous effect, and they were at the same time stimulated, by the severe pressure of existing necessities, to form the desperate resolution of attempting the capture of the Minerva. But then, on farther interrogation, the Indian added, that besides being armed with five-and-twenty
