Chapter 24

WAITING FOR THE GALLEON--DISAPPOINTMENT--CHEQUETAN.

On the 1st of March we made the highlands over Acapulco, and got with all possible expedition into the situation prescribed by the Commodore's orders.*

(*Note. The two men-of-war and the three prizes were arranged out of sight of the land in "a circular line," the two extremities of which were thirty-six miles apart. Within this line, and much nearer to the port, especially at night, were two cutters, whose duty it was to watch the mouth of the harbour and signal to the ships outside them.)

And now we expected with the utmost impatience the 3rd of March, the day fixed for her departure. And on that day we were all of us most eagerly engaged in looking out towards Acapulco; and we were so strangely prepossessed with the certainty of our intelligence, and with an assurance of her coming out of port, that some or other on board us were constantly imagining that they discovered one of our cutters returning with a signal. But to our extreme vexation, both this day and the succeeding night passed over without any news of the galleon. However, we did not yet despair, but were all heartily disposed to flatter ourselves that some unforeseen accident had intervened which might have put off her departure for a few days; and suggestions of this kind occurred in plenty, as we knew that the time fixed by the Viceroy for her sailing was often prolonged on the petition of the merchants of Mexico. Thus we kept up our hopes, and did not abate of our vigilance; and as the 7th of March was Sunday, the beginning of Passion Week, which is observed by the Papists with great strictness and a total cessation from all kinds of labour, so that no ship is permitted to stir out of port during the whole week, this quieted our apprehensions for some days, and disposed us not to expect the galleon till the week following. On the Friday in this week our cutters returned to us, and the officers on board them were very confident that the galleon was still in port, for that she could not possibly have come out but they must have seen her. On the Monday morning succeeding Passion Week--that is, on the 15th of March--the cutters were again despatched to their old station, and our hopes were once more indulged in as sanguine prepossessions as before; but in a week's time our eagerness was greatly abated, and a general dejection and despondency took place in its room. For we were persuaded that the enemy had by some accident discovered our being upon the coast, and had therefore laid an embargo on the galleon till the next year. And indeed this persuasion was but too well founded; for we afterwards learned that our barge, when sent on the discovery of the port of Acapulco, had been seen from the shore, and that this circumstance (no embarkations but canoes ever frequenting that coast) was to them a sufficient proof of the neighbourhood of our squadron, on which they stopped the galleon till the succeeding year.

SHORT OF WATER.

When we had taken up the cutters, all the ships being joined, the Commodore made a signal to speak with their commanders, and upon enquiry into the stock of fresh water remaining on board the squadron, it was found to be so very slender that we were under necessity of quitting our station to procure a fresh supply. And consulting what place was the properest for this purpose, it was agreed that the harbour of Seguataneo, or Chequetan, being the nearest to us, was on that account the most eligible, and it was therefore immediately resolved to make the best of our way thither. By the 1st of April we were so far advanced towards Seguataneo that we thought it expedient to send out two boats, that they might range along the coast and discover the watering-place. They were gone some days, and our water being now very short, it was a particular felicity to us that we met with daily supplies of turtle; for had we been entirely confined to salt provisions, we must have suffered extremely in so warm a climate. Indeed, our present circumstances were sufficiently alarming, and gave the most considerate amongst us as much concern as any of the numerous perils we had hitherto encountered; for our boats, as we conceived by their not returning, had not as yet discovered a place proper to water at, and by the leakage of our casks and other accidents we had not ten days' water on board the whole squadron; so that, from the known difficulty of procuring water on this coast, and the little reliance we had on the buccaneer writers (the only guides we had to trust to), we were apprehensive of being soon exposed to a calamity, the most terrible of any in the long, disheartening catalogue of the distresses of a seafaring life.

But these gloomy suggestions were soon happily ended, for our boats returned on the 5th of April, having discovered a place proper for our purpose about seven miles to the westward of the rocks of Seguataneo, which by the description they gave of it, appeared to be the port called by Dampier* the harbour of Chequetan. On the 7th we stood in, and that evening came to an anchor in eleven fathoms. Thus, after a four months' continuance at sea from the leaving of Quibo, and having but six days' water on board, we arrived in the harbour of Chequetan.

(*Note. Dampier (1652 to 1715), the son of a tenant farmer, near Yeovil, played many parts in his time. He was a buccaneer, a pirate, a circumnavigator, an author, a captain in the navy and an hydrographer. His 'Voyage Round the World', published in 1697, procured him a command in the navy; but though an excellent seaman, he proved an incapable commander, as his buccaneer comrades had doubtless foreseen, for he had never been entrusted with any command among them.)