Page:Paine--Lost ships and lonely seas.djvu/160

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LOST SHIPS AND LONELY SEAS

were carried into Pamboon, where the rajah found them unsatisfactory to interview. David Woodard, chief mate, was in no mood to be thwarted, and it is related of him that "he was examined in the presence of the rajah and all the head men of the place. He made the same answers as before, saying that he must not be stopped and must go on immediately, thus being more desperate and confident from the dangers and escapes he had experienced. The rajah asked him if he could use a musket well, which he denied, having formerly found the inconvenience of acknowledging it. The rajah then showed him a hundred brass guns, but he declined taking charge of them. His wife, a young girl, sat down by the mate and, calling her sister and about twenty other girls, desired them to sit down, and asked Woodard to select a wife from among them. This he refused and, rising up, bade her good night and went out of the house, where they soon brought him some supper."

In the morning this redoubtable Yankee mate who, like Ulysses, was deaf to the songs of the sirens and was also as crafty as he was brave, waited on the rajah of Pamboon and very courteously addressed him in the Malay tongue, requesting prompt passage to Macassar on the ground that the Dutch governor had urgently summoned him, and