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Nor did he stop here; for he also proposed to reduce me from captain of marines to lieutenant, and the two lieutenants of marines to petty officers: but I having a letter from Edward Hughes, Esq; directed to captain Mitchel, then the commanding officer of the Speedwel, to receive me and my servant on board, and to enter me on the roll of equipage, as captain of marines, which I produced, he desisted, and I heard no more of it: but this I remember, that in two days time my pocket-book was stole from me, wherein I kept the said letter, and some memorandums of our captain’s very fine procedings.

Instead of coming into this harbour of St. Catharine’s, it’s plain Shelvocke’s duty was to make the best of his way to the southward, that he might be early with the enemy the Spaniard; for Clipperton, about this time, was actually in the great South Sea. But our commander found it more comfortable to pass the winter away near that glorious luminary the sun, than at the hazard of losing his liquors to follow his orders and his commodore into the frozen straits of Magellan, where Clipperton and his men suffer’d extreme hardships, being quite destitute of those supports which we super-abounded with.