Page:Life, strange voyages, and uncommon adventures of Ambrose Gwinett.pdf/12

12. I was really now almost weary of my life, and should have been very glad to have ended it in the loathsome dungeon; where, with forty others of my unfortunate countrymen, the enemy had slowed me: but, after three years close confinement, we were let out in order to be put on board transports, to be conveyed to Pensylvania, and from thence to England. This, as you may believe was a disagreeable sentence to me, taking it for granted, that a return home would be a return to the gallows: being now, a tolerable master of the Spanish language, I solicited very strongly to be left behind: which favour I obtained, by means of the master of the prison, with whom, during my confinement, I had contracted a sort of intimacy; and he not only took me into his house, as soon as my countrymen were gone, but in a short time, procured me a salary from the governor, for being his deputy.

Indeed, at this particular time, the office was by no means agreeable. The coast had been long infested with pirates, the most desperate gang of villains that can be imagined: and there was scarce a month passed that one or other of their vessels did not fall into the governor's hands, and the crew as constantly were put under my care. Once I very narrowly escaped being knocked on the head by one of these ruffians, and had the key wrestled from me: another time I was shot at. 'Tis true, in both cases the persons suffered for their attempt, and, in the last, I thought a little too cruelly; for the fellow who let off the carabine, was not only put to the torture, to confess his accomplices, but afterwards broke upon the wheel, where he was left to expire, the most shocking spectacle I ever beheld with my eyes.

I had been in my office about three months when