“‘In the Name of the King of the Realm, and by the Authority of Almighty God, I sentence you to be executed this evening at half-past six o’clock, until you are _dead_, DEAD, DEAD; and may God have mercy on your soul.’
“Well, the sheriff took the prisoner and ordered us to be sent back in a large carriage and four milk white horses to the ship.
Next mornin’ at ten o’clock the Spanish lady came aboard, and went down in the cabin with the captain, and sot there and talked a good while about the affair, and cried a good deal, and when she got up she put her hand into her little huzzy and took out twenty doubloons, and give ’em to the captain, and told him to divide that with his crew, and she calls for me and gives me a half-joe, and says she, ‘I give you that for bein’ so good as to find my darter,’ and she went off, and I had a doubloon and a half-joe, and that night we heard the Spaniard was hung.
“Well, we lay in port about four weeks, and we had fine times and see a good many big characters, and I was in England arter this, and I see some of the biggest kind of bugs they got, and I’ll tell about that when I git to it. Well, we took in a load of goods, and weighed anchor for home, and had as fine a passage as ever was sailed over the brine. We made New York and the hands was all paid off, and I had one hundred and sixty dollars in specie except a little on the Manhattan Bank. Then I quit Captain Truesdell, and he gin me a recommend, and I hired to Captain James Williams, and we hadn’t been in port but four weeks afore I sailed with him for Gaudaloupe. We started in November, on Sunday mornin’ jist as the bells begun to ring for church, and weighed anchor for the West Indies, and then I see the difference atwixt the sailor’s Sunday and a Yorker’s, and it made me feel kind’a serious and rother bad.
“The captain had started on a tradin’ and carryin’ v’yge; so when we’d cruised round some months in the West Indies, we took a load and sailed for Gibralter, and if that Gibralter warn’t a pokerish lookin’ place I never see one. We come into the bay and cast anchor under the fort, and they fired three guns over our ship, as a shakin’ hands, to let us know we was welcome, and then the captain and officers had to go ashore and account for themselves. As we lay there and looked up, we could see three tiers of cannon one above another, and soldiers with blue coats trimmed with red, and horseskin caps (as I calls them) paradin’ there. And as soon as the captain got leave of tradin’ back and forth from the governor, all these ’ere cannons was drawn back.