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"The Americans died daily with heat and hard fare, which determined my two comrades and myself in an endeavor to make our escape. We had been in the pepper-gardens four months when an opportunity offered, and we resolved upon trying our fortune. Folgier had by some means got a bayonet, which he fixed in the end of a stick.
Randall and myself had nothing but staves, which were all the weapons we carried with us. "Folgier being the most resolute of us run at one of them, and pushed his bayonet through his body into a tree.
As I was unable to do this I was obliged to go through the manual exercise with the other prisoners; among whom was Wm. Randall of Boston, and Josiah Folgier of Nantucket, both young men, and one of them an old ship-mate of mine. "These two and myself agreed to behave as ignorant and awkward as possible, and what motions we learned one day we were to forget the next.
We were soon all condemned to be shot next morning at seven o'clock, and ordered to be sent into the dungeon and confined in irons, where we were attended by an adjutant who brought a priest with him to pray and converse with us, but Folgier, who hated the sight of an Englishman, desired that we might be left alone. * the clergyman reprimanded him, and told him he made very light of his situation on the supposition that he would be reprieved; but if he expected it he deceived himself.
"Although this last sentence seemed terrible to me, yet in comparison with death, it seemed to be light. Poor Folgier was shot in our presence, previous to which we were told we might go and converse with him.
Folgier still persisted in the clergyman's leaving us, if he would have us make our peace with God, 'for, said he, 'the sight of Englishmen, from whom we have received such treatment, is more disagreeable than the evil spirits of which you have spoken; that, if he could have his choice, he would choose death in preference to life, if he must have it on the condition of such barbarous usage as he had received from their hands; and the thoughts of death did not seem so hideous to him as his past sufferings.
We were all taken out, our irons taken off, and we conducted by a strong guard of soldiers to the parade, surrounded by a circle of armed men, and led into the midst of them, where three white officers were placed by our side; silence was then commanded, and the adjutant taking a paper out of his pocket read our sentence; and now I cannot describe my feelings upon this occasion, nor can it be felt by any one but those who have experienced some remarkable deliverance from the grim hand of death, when surrounded on all sides, and nothing but death expected from every quarter, and by Divine Providence there is some way found out for escape so it seemed to me when the adjutant pulled out another paper from his pocket and read: 'That the Governor and Council, in consideration of the youth of Randall and myself, supposing us to be led on by Folgier, who was the oldest, thought proper to pardon us from death, and that instead we were to receive 800 lashes each.
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