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.