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Updated: May 4, 2025
Flushed with this success, Betagh prevailed upon Hately, and most of the people in the Mercury, not to rejoin me, saying, they had now enough to appear like gentlemen as long as they lived, but it would be a mere nothing when the owner's part was taken out, and the rest divided into 500 shares.
Captain Shelvocke has himself written an account of the expedition, and another was published by Captain Betagh, so that the following narrative is composed from both.
At this they all set up a loud huzza, and requested they might go on the intended cruize in the Mercury. Accordingly Hately and Betagh went on board that bark, and put off from us, giving us three cheers, and stood right in for the land. It may be proper to take some notice of the proceedings of the Mercury after she left me, as I have been informed from some of themselves and some prisoners.
In the mean time, some of his crew went away in his boat to surrender themselves to the enemy, rather than be concerned in such a piratical undertaking. Betagh and his accomplices still kept Hately warm with liquor, and at length brought him to the resolution of leaving the South Sea.
Upon this, they all declared with one voice, that they had never entertained any such opinion; but, on the contrary, that I should always find them obedient to my commands. In the next place, I ordered the Mercury along side, and acquainted her crew with the speech Betagh had made in the Speedwell, and desired to know if any of them were apprehensive of being sold or sacrificed.
Even at my own table, Captain Betagh of the marines insisted on a larger allowance in such coarse terms, that I confined him till he wrote me a submissive letter, on which I restored him.
When every thing was ready for their departure, Captain Betagh, whose turn it was to relieve the marine officer in the Mercury, being unwilling to go, went among our people with a terrified countenance, saying, that he and those with him in the Mercury were going to be sacrificed.
The principal omission, or abbreviation rather, on the present occasion, is the leaving out several controversial matters, inserted by Harris from the account of this voyage by Betagh; which might have sufficient interest among contemporaries, a few years after the unfortunate issue of this misconducted enterprise, but are now of no importance, near a century later. Ed.
I have since learnt that some of our shots in the engagement were well directed, and that we killed and wounded several of the enemy. Having thus got away from the Peregrine, I slipped off in the evening with much ado from the Brilliant, her consort, on board of which Betagh now was, and even desired to be the first to board me.
The English prisoners were very indifferently used; but Betagh, being a Roman Catholic, and of a nation which the Spaniards are very fond of, was treated with much respect, and was even made an officer. In the morning of the 29th February, we saw a vessel at anchor in the road of Guanchaeo, and anchored alongside of her at eleven a.m.
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