Page:The true story book.djvu/78

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CAPTAIN SNELGRAVE AND THE PIRATES

On this Captain Davis said: 'I know this man, and can easily guess his thoughts; for he thinks, if he should act in the manner yon have proposed, he will ever after lose his reputation. Now I am for allowing everybody to go to the devil their own way, so desire you will give him the remains of his own cargo and let him do with it what he thinks fitting.'

This was readily granted; and now, the tide being turned, they were as kind to me as they had at first been severe, and we employed ourselves in saving what goods we could.

And through the influence of Captain Davis, one of the ships the pirates had taken, called the 'Bristol Snow,' was spared from burning for they burned such prizes as they had no use for. And I was set entirely at liberty, and went to the house of Captain Glynn, who, when the pirates left the river of Sierra Leone, together with other English captains who had been hiding from the pirates in the woods, their ships having been taken, helped me to fit up the 'Bristol Snow' that we might return to England in it. And we left the river Sierra Leone the 10th day of May, and came safe to Bristol, where I found a letter from the owner of the ship I had gone out with, who had heard of my misfortune, and most generously comforted me, giving money for my poor sailors and promising me command of another ship—a promise which he soon after performed.

I shall now inform the reader what became of my kind school-fellow, Griffin, and my generous friend Davis. The first got out of the hands of the pirates by taking away a boat from the stern of the ship he was in when on the coast of Guinea, and was driven on shore there. But afterwards he went passenger to Barbadoes in an English ship, where he was taken with a violent fever, and so died.

As for Davis, he sailed to the island Princess, belonging to the Portuguese, which is in the Bay of Guinea. Here the people soon discovered they were pirates by their lavishness; but the Governor winked at it, because of the great gain he made by them. But afterwards; someone putting it into his mind that if the King of Portugal heard of this it would be his ruin, he plotted to destroy Davis. And when, before sailing, Captain Davis came on shore with the surgeon and some others to bid farewell to the Governor, they found no Governor, but many people with weapons were gathered together in the street, who at a word from the Governor's steward fired at Davis and his men. The surgeon and two others were killed on the spot, but Davis, though struck by four shots, went on running