As they had no wish to emulate poor Gayny, they sought about "for a Tree to fell across the River." They cut it down, as soon as they had found it, "and it reached clean over." The goods and pirates were then crossed in safety. All hands soon forgot poor Gayny, for they came across a plantain walk in a clearing, and made a good breakfast, and stripped it of every fruit. They dismissed their guide here, with the gift of an axe head, and hired an old Indian to guide them farther towards the North Sea. The next day they reckoned themselves out of danger, and set forth cheerily.
For the last two days Wafer had been in anguish from his burnt knee. As the pirates made ready to leave their bivouac, on the tenth morning of the march, he declared that he could not "trudge it further through Rivers and Woods," with his knee as it was. Two other pirates who were broken with the going, declared that they, also, were too tired out to march. There was no talk, among the rest of the band, about shooting the weary ones, according to the order they had made at starting. Instead of "putting them out of their misery," they "took a very kind Leave," giving the broken men such stores as they could spare, and telling them to keep in good heart, and follow on when they had rested.
One of Wafer's comrades on this occasion was "Mr Richard Jopson, who had served an Apprenticeship to a Druggist in London. He was an ingenious Man, and a good Scholar; he had with him a Greek Testament which he frequently read, and would translate _extempore_ into _English_, to such of the Company as were dispos'd to hear him." The other weary man was John Hingson, a mariner. They watched their mates march away through the woods, and then turned back, sick at heart, to the shelter of the huts, where the Indians looked at them sulkily, and flung them green plantains, "as you would Bones to a Dog." One of the Indians made a mess of aromatic herbs and dressed Wafer's burn, so that, in three weeks' time, he could walk.
Dampier's party marched on through jungle, wading across rivers, which took them up to the chest, staggering through swamps and bogs, and clambering over rotten tree trunks, and across thorn brakes. They were wet and wretched and half starved, for their general food was macaw berries. Sometimes they killed a monkey, once Dampier killed a turkey, and once they came to a plantain patch where "we fed plentifully on plantains, both ripe and green." Their clothes were rotted into shreds, their boots were fallen to pieces, their feet were blistered and raw, their legs were mere skinless ulcers from the constant soaking. Their faces were swelled and bloody from the bites of mosquitoes and wood-ticks. "Not a Man of us but wisht the Journey at an End." Those who have seen "Bad Lands," or what is called "timber," or what is called "bush," will know what the party looked like, when, on the twenty-second day, they saw the North Sea. The day after that they reached the Rio Conception, and drifted down to the sea in some canoas, to an Indian village, built on the beach "for the benefit of Trade with the Privateers." About nine miles away, the Indians told them, was a French privateer ship, under one Captain Tristian, lying at La Sounds Key. They stayed a night at the village, and then went aboard the French ship, which was careened in a creek, with a brushwood fire on her side, cleaning away her barnacles for a roving cruise. Here they parted with their Indian guides, not without sorrow, for it is not pleasant to say "So Long" to folk with whom one has struggled, and lived, and suffered. "We were resolved to reward them to their hearts' Content," said Dampier, much as a cowboy, at the end of the trail, will give sugar to his horse, as he bids him good-bye. The pirates spent their silver royally, buying red, blue and green beads, and knives, scissors, and looking-glasses, from the French pirates. They bought up the entire stock of the French ship, but even then they felt that they had not rewarded their guides sufficiently. They therefore subscribed a half-dollar piece each, in coin, as a sort of makeweight. With the toys, and the bags of silver, the delighted Indians passed back to the isthmus, where they told golden stories of the kind whites, so that the Indians of the Main could not do enough for Wafer, and for the four pirates left behind on the march.