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Updated: May 31, 2025
About midday a light breeze sprang up from the northwest. The two Indiamen and the uninjured grab, being the first to catch it, gained a full mile before the Good Intent, under topgallant sails, studding sails, royal and driver, began to slip through the water at her best speed. But, as the previous day's experience had proved, she was no match in sailing capacity for the pursuers.
I thought; "to die thus a victim to the foul revenge of that man?" I resolved to struggle for life. I looked round me on every side. The Indiamen were scattered far and wide, none of them were coming up on our track. Still I swam on, but I felt how hopeless was the struggle.
Wolf was a native of Mecklenburg, who arrived in Ceylon about 1750, as chaplain in one of the Dutch East Indiamen, and having been taken into the government employment, he served for twenty years at Jaffna, first as Secretary to the Governor, and afterwards in an office the duties of which he describes to be the examination and signature of the "writings which served to commence a suit in any of the Courts of justice."
The second grab was following hard in the wake of the first; and it was plain that the two Indiamen were both somewhat faster than the Good Intent; for during the running fight that had just ended so disastrously for the grab, they had considerably lessened the gap between them and their quarry. Captain Barker watched them with an expression of fierce determination, but not without anxiety.
I'd rather you had fallen in love with a girl without a shilling." "Well, sir, when I first fell in love she had not a sixpence." "Humph! well, nephew, that may be very true; but, as I said before, follow your profession." "Marriage will not prevent my so doing, uncle. Most captains of Indiamen are married men."
It was in such paroxysms of displeasure that he prophesied misfortune to Peregrine, and even told him one morning, that he had dreamed of the shipwreck of the two East Indiamen, on board of which he had hazarded his money.
Out of her ship's company, she had but eight killed and five wounded. They informed me, that they had sailed three months ago from St Pierre's, Martinique, and had fallen in with the other two privateers, and cruised in company, having taken nine West Indiamen since they had come out.
The outrageous Perkins had been a sailor in his time mate of a privateer in the great French war, afterwards master of a slaver, developing at last into the owner of a small fleet of West Indiamen. Williams was his favourite captain, whom he would bring home in the evening to drink rum and water, and smoke churchwarden pipes with him. The niece had to sit up, too, at these dismal revels.
The French tricolour hardly had time to blow clear from their taffrails, when the English unions waved aloft in defiance; and that Admiral Linois might be more perplexed by the arrangements of the night, three of the most warlike Indiamen displayed the red ensign, while the remainder of the ships hoisted up the blue.
I had now been two years and a half in the West Indies, and I was fast approaching my nineteenth year. At this period we had retaken several English West Indiamen. In one of these retaken merchant vessels, there was found, as the French prize-master, and now of course our prisoner, a mercurial little fellow of the name of Messurier.
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