Page:Daring deeds of famous pirates; true stories of the stirring adventures, bravery and resource of pirates, filibusters & buccaneers (1917).djvu/127

 gunners, as well as one English and one Dutch renegado. The good ship, with this miscellaneous crew, put to sea. It was better than slaving away ashore, but it was galling to John Rawlins, a fine specimen of an English sailor, to have to serve under these dogs. Rawlins, you must understand, was one of those hot-tempered, blunt and daring seamen such as had made England what she was in the time of Elizabeth. Forceful, direct, a man of simple piety, of great national pride, he was also a sailor possessing considerable powers of resource and organisation, as we shall presently see.

The Exchange was as fine and handsome a ship as England had built during the Elizabethan or early Stuart period. As she began to curtsey to the swell of the Mediterranean Sea, the slaves were at work looking after the guns and so on. Rawlins, in his brusque, fierce manner which is so typical of Drake and many another sailor of the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century, was working and raging at the same time. While he was busying himself among his fellow-countrymen, pulling ropes and looking after the cannon, he complained in no measured terms of the indignity of having to work merely to keep these Moslem brutes in a life of wickedness. He broke out into a torrent of complaint, as the other slaves besought him to be quiet "least they should all fare the worse for his distemperature." However, he had firmly resolved to effect an escape from all this, and after mentioning the matter cautiously to his fellow-slaves he found they were similarly minded.

From now onwards there follows one of the best yarns in the history of piracy, and the story is as true as it is exciting. On the 15th of January the morning tide had brought the Exchange near to Cape de Gatte, and