Page:Paine--Lost ships and lonely seas.djvu/406

360 a light rope; so before she could drift ashore they stowed themselves aboard, leaving a dozen who preferred to live on Juan Fernandez and several negroes who could shift for themselves. There had been deaths enough to reduce the number of officers and men to fifty as the complement of the forty-foot bark, which ran up the British ensign and wallowed out into the wide Pacific.

The plans of Captain George Shelvocke were direct and simple—to steer for the Bay of Concepción as the nearest port, in the hope of capturing some vessel larger and more comfortable than his own. In a moderate sea the bark "tumbled prodigiously," and all hands were very wet because the only deck above them was a grating covered with a tarpaulin; but the captain refused to bear away and ease her. At some distance from the South American coast a large ship was sighted in the moonlight. The desperate circumstances had worn the line be-