But we shall leave him a while, to consider our ship and the merchandise which we had to dispose of.  There was but very little trade in the place where we were; and I was once resolved to venture to sail to the river Kilam, and so to the city of Nanquin; but Providence ordered it otherwise, by our old pilot’s bringing a Japan merchant to us, to see what goods we had.  He immediately bought our opium, for which he gave us a very good price in gold by weight, some wedges of which were about ten or eleven ounces.  It came into my head that perhaps he might buy the ship too; and I ordered the interpreter to propose it to him.  He said nothing then, but shrugged up his shoulders; yet in a few days after he came accompanied by a missionary priest, who was his interpreter, with this proposal, That as he had bought a great quantity of our goods, he had not money enough to purchase our ship; but if I pleased he would hire her, with all my men, to go to Japan, and from thence with another loading to the Philippine islands, the freight of both which he would very willingly pay to us before; and at their return to Japan, would buy the ship.  Upon this we asked the Captain and his men if they were willing to go to Japan; to which they unanimously agreed.  While this was in agitation, the young man my nephew left to attend me, told me, “That as I did not care to accept his prospect of advantage he would manage it for me as I pleased, and render me a faithful account of his success, which would be wholly mine.”  Indeed I was very unwilling to part with him; but considering it might be for the young man’s good, I discoursed with my partner about it, who, of his own generosity, gave him his share of the vessel, so that I could do no otherwise than give him mine:  but, however, we let him have but the proper half of it, and preserved a power, that when we met in England, if he had obtained success, he should account to us for one half of the profit of the ship’s freight and the other should be his own.  Thus having taken a writing under his hand, away he sailed to Japan, where the merchant dealt very honestly by him, got him a licence to come on shore, sent him loaded to the Philippines with a Japanese supercargo, from whence he came back again loaded with European goods, cloves, and other spiceries.  By this voyage he cleared a considerable sum of money, which determined him not to sell his ship, but to trade on his own account; so he returned to the Manillas, where, getting acquaintance, he made his ship free, was hired by the governor privately to go to Acapulco in America, on the Mexican coast, with a licence to travel to the great city of Mexico.  This traffic turned out greatly to account, and my friend finding means to get to Jamaica, returned nine years after exceedingly rich into England.

In parting with the ship, it comes in course to consider of those men who had saved our lives when in the river of Cambodia; and though, by the way, they were a couple of rogues, who thought to turn pirates themselves, yet we paid them what they had before demanded, and gave each of them a small sum of money, making the Englishman a gunner, and the Dutchman a boatswain, with which they were very well contented.