He told me they had some arms with them,
but they were perfectly useless, for that they had neither powder
nor ball, the washing of the sea having spoiled all their powder
but a little, which they used at their first landing to provide
themselves with some food.
I asked him what he thought would become of them there, and if they
had formed any design of making their escape. He said they had
many consultations about it; but that having neither vessel nor
tools to build one, nor provisions of any kind, their councils
always ended in tears and despair. I asked him how he thought they
would receive a proposal from me, which might tend towards an
escape; and whether, if they were all here, it might not be done.
I told him with freedom, I feared mostly their treachery and ill-
usage of me, if I put my life in their hands; for that gratitude
was no inherent virtue in the nature of man, nor did men always
square their dealings by the obligations they had received so much
as they did by the advantages they expected. I told him it would
be very hard that I should be made the instrument of their
deliverance, and that they should afterwards make me their prisoner
in New Spain, where an Englishman was certain to be made a
sacrifice, what necessity or what accident soever brought him
thither; and that I had rather be delivered up to the savages, and
be devoured alive, than fall into the merciless claws of the
priests, and be carried into the Inquisition.
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