Le Barre and the rest begged to be taken on board.  However, though he denied them, he suffered Le Barre and some few to come, with whom he and his men drank plentifully.  The negroes on board Lewis told him the French had a plot against him.  He answered, he could not withstand his destiny; for the devil told him in the great cabin he should be murdered that night.

In the dead of the night, the rest of the French came on board in canoes, got into the cabin and killed Lewis.  They fell on the crew; but, after an hour and a half’s dispute, the French were beaten off, and the quarter master, John Cornelius, an Irishman, succeeded Lewis.

  —­“He was the mildest manner’d man,
  That ever scuttled ship or cut a throat;
  With such true breeding of a gentleman,
  You never could discern his real thought. 
  Pity he loved an adventurous life’s variety,
  He was so great a loss to good society.”

THE LIFE, CAREER AND DEATH OF CAPTAIN THOMAS WHITE.

He was born at Plymouth, where his mother kept a public house.  She took great care of his education, and when he was grown up, as he had an inclination to the sea, procured him the king’s letter.  After he had served some years on board a man-of-war, he went to Barbadoes, where he married, got into the merchant service, and designed to settle in the island.  He had the command of the Marygold brigantine given him, in which he made two successful voyages to Guinea and back to Barbadoes.  In his third, he had the misfortune to be taken by a French pirate, as were several other English ships, the masters and inferior officers of which they detained, being in want of good artists.  The brigantine belonging to White, they kept for their own use, and sunk the vessel they before sailed in; but meeting with a ship on the Guinea coast more fit for their purpose, they went on board her and burnt the brigantine.

It is not my business here to give an account of this French pirate, any farther than Capt.  White’s story obliges me, though I beg leave to take notice of their barbarity to the English prisoners, for they would set them up as a butt or mark to shoot at; several of whom were thus murdered in cold blood, by way of diversion.

White was marked out for a sacrifice by one of these villains, who, for what reason I know not, had sworn his death, which he escaped thus.  One of the crew, who had a friendship for White, knew this fellow’s design to kill him in the night, and therefore advised him to lie between him and the ship’s side, with intention to save him; which indeed he did, but was himself shot dead by the murderous villain, who mistook him for White.

After some time cruising along the coast, the pirates doubled the Cape of Good Hope, and shaped their course for Madagascar, where, being drunk and mad, they knocked their ship on the head, at the south end of the island, at a place called by the natives Elexa.  The country thereabouts was governed by a king, named Mafaly.