By this time they had drawn in four more of the men to approve of what they had done, and promised to join with them, so that now there were twelve in number, and being but twenty-four at first, whereof four were murdered, they had but eight men to be apprehensive of, and those they could easily look after.  So the next day, they sent for them all to appear before their new captain, where they were told by Gow what his resolution was, viz., to go a-cruising or to go upon the account.  If they were willing to join with them and go into their measures, they should be well used, and there should be no distinction among them but they should all fare alike; he said that they had been forced to do what they had done by the barbarous usage of Ferneau, but that there was now no looking back; and therefore, as they had not been concerned in what was past, they had nothing to do but to act in concert, do their duty as sailors, and obey orders for the good of the ship, and no harm should come to any of them.

As they all looked like condemned prisoners brought up to the bar to receive sentence of death, so they all answered by a profound silence, which Gow took as they meant it, viz, as a consent because they durst not refuse.  So they were then permitted to go up and down everywhere as they used to do, though such of them as sometimes afterwards showed any reluctance to act as principals, were never trusted, always suspected and very often severely beaten.  Some of them were in many ways inhumanly treated and that particularly by Williams, the lieutenant, who was in his nature a merciless, cruel, and inexorable wretch, as we shall have occasion to take notice of again in its place.

They were now in a new circumstance of life, and acting upon a different stage of business, though upon the same stage as to the element, the water.  Before they were a merchant ship, laden upon a good account, with merchants’ goods from the coast of Barbary, and bound to the coast of Italy; but they were now a crew of pirates, or as they call them in the Levant, Corsairs, bound nowhere but to look out for purchase and spoil wherever they could find it.  In pursuit of this wicked trade they first changed the name of the ship, which was before called the George galley, and which they called now the Revenge, a name, indeed, suitable to the bloody steps they had taken.  In the next place they made the best of the ship’s forces.  The ship had but twelve guns mounted when they came out of Holland, but as they had six more good guns in the hold with cartridges and everything proper for service (which they had in store through being freighted for the Dutch merchants, and the Algerians being at war with the Dutch), they supposed they might want them for defence.  Now they took care to mount them for a much worse design, so that now they had eighteen guns, though too many for the number of hands they had on board.  In the third place, instead of pursuing their voyage to Genoa with the ship’s cargo, they took a clear contrary course, and resolved to station themselves upon the coasts of Spain and Portugal, and to cruise upon all nations; but what they chiefly aimed at was a ship with wine, if possible, for that they wanted extremely.