On taking to the road again, wet and starving as they were, they found themselves in a network of rivers, some thirty of which they had to wade, during the day's march. The heavy rain drenched them as they clambered along across the jungle. They had but a little handful of fire that night, so that they could not dry nor warm themselves. They crouched about the "funk of green-wood," shivering in the smoke, chewing bullets to alleviate their hunger. They slept there in great misery, careless of what happened to them. "The Spaniards were but seldom in our thoughts," says Dampier, for the pirates thought only of guides and food, and feared their own Indian servants more than the enemy. A watch of two pirates kept a guard all that night, with orders to shoot any Indian who showed a sign of treachery. They rose before it was light and pushed on into the woods, biting on the bullet, or the quid, to help them to forget their hunger. By ten o'clock they arrived at the house of a brisk young Indian, who had been a servant to the Bishop of Panama, the man who gave the gold ring to Sawkins. Here they had a feast of yams and sweet potatoes, boiled into a broth with monkey-meat, a great comfort to those who were weak and sickly. They built a great fire in one of the huts, at which they dried their clothes, now falling to pieces from the continual soakings. They also cleaned their rusty gun-locks, and dried their powder, talking cheerily together, about the fire, while the rain roared upon the thatch. They were close beside the Rio Congo "and thus far," says Dampier, the most intelligent man among them, "we might have come in our Canoa, if I could have persuaded them to it."
As they sat in the hut, in the warmth of the blaze, that rainy May day, Lionel Wafer met with an accident. He was sitting on the ground, beside one of the pirates, who was drying his powder, little by little, half a pound at a time, in a great silver dish, part of the plunder of the cruise. "A careless Fellow passed by with his Pipe lighted," and dropped some burning crumb of tobacco on to the powder, which at once blew up. It scorched Wafer's knee very terribly, tearing off the flesh from the bone, and burning his leg from the knee to the thigh. Wafer, who was the surgeon of the party, had a bag full of salves and medicines. He managed to dress his wounds, and to pass a fairly comfortable night, "and being unwilling to be left behind by my Companions, I made hard shift to jog on, and bear them Company," when camp was broken at daybreak.