Page:Intrepid & daring adventures of sixteen British seamen.pdf/6

6 from the south, carried them briskly up the wide coast of Peru. On their voyage, which was extended to a considerable distance beyond Lima, they had not the good fortune to fall in with a single legitimate prize; but running short of provisions, they were soon forced to put under contribution such trading vessels and boats as they chanced to fall in with. Supporting themselves entirely by compulsory levies it was not long before they lost all proper sense of a distinction between plundering and privateering; but the plea of necessity was always at hand to satisfy their not over-scrupulous consciences, that in employing such means to supply their wants, they did nothing morally wrong—or at least that, circumstanced as they were, their doings amounted, at the utmost, to justifiable maurauding. Their acts of depredation became so frequent, however, and in some instances of so aggravated a character, that they soon excited alarm throughout the whole coast. Even at Lima they were heard of. At one period, indeed, it was seriously intended by the authorities there to dispatch a small force to consign the drugger and her pilfering crew to the bottom of the ocean but they were saved the trouble of carrying their their threat into execution. The offenders soon brought on their own apparent ruin; for, dreaded by friends no less than foes, they were in a few weeks shunned and run from by every bark that hove in sight. Smugglers, as well as people of their own calling, refused not only to relieve their wants, but to hold any intercourse with them;