Page:Paine--Lost ships and lonely seas.djvu/343

Rh of a mile away. Most of them were overtaken in a boat, but Isaac Morris and one sailor, naked as the day they were born, scrambled into the jungle, and had such a piteous time of it that they were glad to surrender to the laborers of the nearest plantation. Taken back to the ship, they were thrust into the stocks, neck and heels, four hours a day for a fortnight as a hint to discourage such rash enterprise.

Admiral Pizarro had journeyed overland to Chile, and in the very leisurely course of time he returned to Buenos Aires to set sail for Spain in his flag-ship, having achieved nothing more than a wild-goose chase in quest of the daring Anson. The towering, ornate Asia was refitted as completely as possible, but there was a great lack of seamen. More than half her crew had died of scurvy or deserted during the long voyage and the year at an anchorage. Press-gangs combed the streets and dives of Buenos Aires and Montevideo, but the ship could not find a proper complement, and, as a last resort, eleven Indians were unceremoniously thrown on board. They had been captured while raiding the outposts of the thinly held Spanish settlements, and were of a fighting tribe which preferred death to submission to the cruel and rapacious invader.

One of these eleven Indians was a chief by the name of Orellana and a man to be considered note-