In 1671 they raised a force of 2,000 men, marched across the isthmus, and besieged and took Panama; their success, as usual, being marked by horrible atrocities.  In 1685 a Spanish fleet of fourteen sail, which had been fitted out to put them down, found ten buccaneer ships in the bay of Panama, but dared not give them battle.  The war between France and England after 1688 dissolved the alliance between the French and English buccaneers; and the last conspicuous event in their history was the capture of Cartagena in 1697.  Soon after this date they disappeared as an organised body, though for many years members of the band remained as pirates in the South Seas.)

Goats’ flesh being scarce, we rarely being able to kill above one a day, and our people growing tired of fish (which abounds at this place), they at last condescended to eat seals, which by degrees they came to relish, and called it lamb.  But there is another amphibious creature to be met with here, called a sea-lion, that bears some resemblance to a seal, though it is much larger.  This, too, we ate, under the denomination of beef.  In general there was no difficulty in killing them, for they were incapable either of escaping or resisting, their motion being the most unwieldy that can be conceived, their blubber, all the time they were moving, being agitated in large waves under their skins.  However, a sailor one day being carelessly employed in skinning a young sea-lion, the female from which he had taken it came upon him unperceived, and getting his head in her mouth, she with her teeth scored his skull in notches in many places, and thereby wounded him so desperately that though all possible care was taken of him, he died in a few days.

CHAPTER 10. 
REAPPEARANCE OF THE GLOUCESTER—­DISTRESS ON BOARD—­HER EFFORTS TO
   ENTER THE BAY.

The arrival of the Trial sloop at this island so soon after we came there ourselves gave us great hopes of being speedily joined by the rest of the squadron; and we were for some days continually looking out in expectation of their coming in sight.  But near a fortnight being elapsed without any of them having appeared, we began to despair of ever meeting them again.

RETURN OF THE GLOUCESTER.

But on the 21st of June some of our people, from an eminence on shore, discerned a ship to leeward, with her courses even with the horizon.  However, after viewing her for a short time, the weather grew thick and hazy, and they lost sight of her.  On the 26th, towards noon, we discerned a sail in the north-east quarter, which we conceived to be the very same ship that had been seen before, and our conjectures proved true; and about one o’clock she approached so near that we could distinguish her to be the Gloucester.  As we had no doubt of her being in great distress, the Commodore immediately ordered his boat to her assistance, laden with fresh water, fish, and vegetables, which was a very seasonable relief to them; for perhaps