I told him I would take his advice when I came to any port where I could find a ship for my turn, or get any customer to buy this.  He replied, I should meet with customers enough for the ship at Nanquin, and that a Chinese junk would serve me very well to go back again; and that he would procure me people both to buy one and sell the other.

“Well, but, Seignior,” says I, “as you say they know the ship so well, I may, perhaps, if I follow your measures, be instrumental to bring some honest innocent men into a terrible broil, and, perhaps, be murdered in cold blood; for wherever they find the ship they will prove the guilt upon the men by proving this was the ship, and so innocent men may probably be overpowered and murdered.”—­“Why,” said the old man, “I’ll find out a way to prevent that also; for as I know all those commanders you speak of very well, and shall see them all as they pass by, I will be sure to set them to rights in the thing, and let them know that they had been so much in the wrong; that though the people who were on board at first might run away with the ship, yet it was not true that they had turned pirates; and that in particular those were not the men that first went off with the ship, but innocently bought her for their trade; and I am persuaded they will so far believe me, as, at least, to act more cautiously for the time to come.”—­“Well,” said I, “and will you deliver one message to them from me?”—­“Yes, I will,” says he, “if you will give it under your hand in writing, that I may be able to prove it came from you, and not out of my own head.”  I answered, that I would readily give it him under my hand.  So I took a pen and ink, and paper, and wrote at large the story of assaulting me with the long-boats, &c. the pretended reason of it, and the unjust, cruel design of it; and concluded to the commanders that they had done what they not only should have been ashamed or, but also, that if ever they came to England, and I lived to see them there, they should all pay dearly for it, if the laws of my country were not grown out of use before I arrived there.

My old pilot read this over and over again, and asked me several times if I would stand to it.  I answered, I would stand to it as long as I had any thing left in the world; being sensible that I should, one time or other, find an opportunity to put it home to them.  But we had no occasion ever to let the pilot carry this letter, for he never went back again.  While those things were passing between us, by way of discourse, we went forward directly for Nanquin, and, in about thirteen days sail, came to anchor at the south-west point of the great gulf of Nanquin; where, by the way, I came by accident to understand, that the two Dutch ships were gone that length before me, and that I should certainly fall into their hands.  I consulted my partner again in this exigency, and he was as much at a loss as I was, and would very gladly have been safe on shore almost any where.  However, I was