Our Old Friends Having
Taken Up Their Abode Near Us, One Of Them, Whose Name Was Pedero, (A Man Of
Some Note,) Made Me A Present Of A Staff Of Honour, Such As The Chiefs
Generally Carry.
In return, I dressed him in a suit of old clothes, of
which he was not a little proud.
He had a fine person, and a good presence,
and nothing but his colour distinguished him from an European. Having got
him, and another, into a communicative mood, we began to enquire of them if
the Adventure had been there during my absence; and they gave us to
understand, in a manner which admitted of no doubt, that, soon after we
were gone, she arrived; that she staid between ten and twenty days, and had
been gone ten months. They likewise asserted that neither she, nor any
other ship, had been stranded on the coast, as had been reported. This
assertion, and the manner in which they related the coming and going of the
Adventure, made me easy about her; but did not wholly set aside our
suspicions of a disaster having happened to some other strangers. Besides
what has been already related, we had been told that a ship had lately been
here, and was gone to a place called Terato, which is on the north side of
the strait. Whether this story related to the former or no, I cannot say.
Whenever I questioned the natives about it, they always denied all
knowledge of it, and for some time past, had avoided mentioning it.
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