Insomuch As The Whole Island, Being Some Two Or Three
Miles About, Is Cast Into Grounds Of Gardening And Orchards.
After six weeks' abode in this place, we put to sea the last of March;
where, after two or
Three days, a great Ship which we had taken at St.
Domingo, and thereupon was called The New Year's Gift, fell into a
great leak, being laden with ordnance, hides, and other spoils, and in
the night she lost the company of our fleet. Which being missed the
next morning by the General, he cast about with the whole fleet,
fearing some great mischance to be happened unto her, as in very deed
it so fell out; for her leak was so great that her men were all tired
with pumping. But at the last, having found her, and the bark Talbot
in her company, which stayed by great hap with her, they were ready to
take their men out of her for the saving of them. And so the General,
being fully advertised of their great extremity, made sail directly
back again to Carthagena with the whole fleet; where, having staid
eight or ten days more about the unlading of this ship and the
bestowing thereof and her men into other ships, we departed once again
to sea, directing our course toward the Cape St. Anthony, being the
westermost part of Cuba, where we arrived the 27th of April. But
because fresh water could not presently be found, we weighed anchor
and departed, thinking in few days to recover the Matanzas, a place to
the eastward of Havana.
After we had sailed some fourteen days we were brought to Cape St.
Anthony again through lack of favourable wind; but then our scarcity
was grown such as need make us look a little better for water, which
we found in sufficient quantity, being indeed, as I judge, none other
than rain-water newly fallen and gathered up by making pits in a plot
of marish ground some three hundred paces from the seaside.
I do wrong if I should forget the good example of the General at this
place, who, to encourage others, and to hasten the getting of fresh
water aboard the ships, took no less pain himself than the meanest; as
also at St. Domingo, Carthagena, and all other places, having always
so vigilant a care and foresight in the good ordering of his fleet,
accompanying them, as it is said, with such wonderful travail of body,
as doubtless had he been the meanest person, as he was the chiefest,
he had yet deserved the first place of honour; and no less happy do we
account him for being associated with Master Carlile, his Lieutenant-
General, by whose experience, prudent counsel, and gallant performance
he achieved so many and happy enterprises of the war, by whom also he
was very greatly assisted in setting down the needful orders, laws,
and course of justice, and the due administration of the same upon all
occasions.
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