At length we got close under the stern, and hooked on with our boat-hook.  This the Spaniards unhooked, and we dropped astern, having laid our oars in; but the breeze dying entirely away, we again pulled up alongside, and took possession.  The poor man was still at the helm, bleeding profusely.  We offered him every assistance, and asked why he did not surrender sooner.  He replied that he was an old Castilian.  Whether he meant that an earlier surrender would have disgraced him, or that he contemplated, from his former experience, a chance of escape to the last moment, I cannot tell.  Certain it is that no one ever behaved better; and I felt that I would have given all I possessed to have healed the wounds of this patient, meek, and undaunted old man, who uttered no complaint, but submitted to his fate with a magnanimity which would have done credit to Socrates himself.  He had received four musket-balls in his body, and, of course, survived his capture but a very few hours.

We found to our surprise that this vessel, with the three others, one of which was taken by another of our boats, were from Lima.  They were single-masted, about thirty tons burthen, twelve men each, and were laden with copper, hides, wax, and cochineal, and had been out five months.  They were bound to Valentia, from which they were only one day’s sail when we intercepted them.  Such is the fortune of war!  This gallant man, after a voyage of incredible labour and difficulty, would in a few hours have embraced his family, and gladdened their hearts with the produce of honest industry and successful enterprise; when, in a moment, all their hopes were blasted by our legal murder and robbery; and our prize-money came to our pockets with the tears, if not the curses, of the widow and the orphan!

From some information which the captain obtained in the prize, he was induced to stand over towards the Balearic Islands.  We made Ivica, and stood past it; then ran for Palma Bay in the island of Majorca; here we found nothing, to our great disappointment, and continued our course round the island.

An event occurred here, so singular as scarcely to be credible; but the fact is well attested, as there were others who witnessed it beside myself.  The water was smooth, and the day remarkably fine; we were distant from the shore more than a mile and a quarter, when the captain, wishing to try the range of the main-deck guns, which were long eighteen-pounders, ordered the gunner to elevate one of them and fire it towards the land.  The gunner asked whether he should point the gun at any object.  A man was seen walking on the white sandy beach, and as there did not appear to be the slightest chance of hitting him, for he only looked like a speck, the captain desired the gunner to fire at him; he did so, and the man fell.  A herd of bullocks at this moment was seen coming out of the woods, and the boats were sent with a party to shoot some of them for the ship’s company.