For two years we remained on the island of Madagascar, for at the beginning we had no vessel large enough to pass the ocean.

I never proposed to speak in the general consultations, but one day I told the company that our best plan was to cruise along the coast in canoes, and seize upon the first vessel we could get that was better than our own, and so from that to another, till perhaps we might at last get a good ship to carry us wherever we pleased to go.

“Excellent advice,” says one of them.  “Admirable advice,” says another.  “Yes, yes,” says the third (which was a gunner), “the English dog has given excellent advice, but it is just the way to bring us all to the gallows.  To go a-thieving, till from a little vessel we come to a great ship, and so shall we turn downright pirates, the end of which is to be hanged.”

“You may call us pirates,” says another, “if you will, and if we fall into bad hands we may be used like pirates; but I care not for that.  I’ll be a pirate or anything, rather than starve here!”

And so they cried all, “Let us have a canoe!”

The gunner, overruled by the rest, submitted; but as we broke up the council, he came to me and very gravely.  “My lad,” says he, “thou art born to do a world of mischief; thou hast commenced pirate very young; but have a care of the gallows, young man; have a care, I say, for thou wilt be an eminent thief.”

I laughed at him, and told him I did not know what I might come to hereafter; but as our case was now, I should make no scruple to take the first ship I came at to get our liberty.  I only wished we could see one, and come at her.

When we had made three canoes of some size, we set out on as odd a voyage as ever man went.  We were a little fleet of three ships, and an army of between twenty and thirty as dangerous fellows as ever lived.  We were bound somewhere and nowhere, for though we knew what we intended to do, we really did not know what we were doing.

We cruised up and down the coast, but no ship came in sight, and at last, with more courage than discretion, more resolution than judgment, we launched for the main coast of Africa.

The voyage was much longer than we expected, and when we were landed upon the continent it seemed the most desolate, desert, and inhospitable country in the world.

It was here that we took one of the rashest and wildest and most desperate resolutions that ever was taken by man; this was to travel overland through the heart of the country, from the coast of Mozambique to the coast of Angola or Guinea, a continent of land of at least 1,800 miles, in which journey we had excessive heats to support, impassable deserts to go over, no carriages, camels, or beasts of any kind to carry our baggage, innumerable wild and ravenous beasts to encounter, such as lions, leopards, tigers, lizards, and elephants; we had nations of savages to encounter, barbarous and brutish to the last degree; hunger and thirst to struggle with, and, in one word, terrors enough to have daunted the stoutest hearts that ever were placed in cases of flesh and blood.