He
promised the slave that if he would help him,--and he told him it would
be very easy to do so,--he would give him money enough to buy his
freedom and to return to his friends, and this, of course, was a great
inducement to the poor fellow, who may have been an Englishman or a
Frenchman in good circumstances at home. The slave agreed to the
proposals, and the first thing he did was to bring some
writing-materials to Roc, who thereupon began the composition of a
letter upon which he based all his hopes of life and freedom.
When he was coming into the bay, Roc had noticed a large French vessel
that was lying at some distance from the town, and he wrote his letter
as if it had come from the captain of this ship. In the character of
this French captain he addressed his letter to the Governor of the town,
and in it he stated that he had understood that certain Companions of
the Coast, for whom he had great sympathy,--for the French and the
buccaneers were always good friends,--had been captured by the Governor,
who, he heard, had threatened to execute them. Then the French captain,
by the hand of Roc, went on to say that if any harm should come to these
brave men, who had been taken and imprisoned when they were doing no
harm to anybody, he would swear, in his most solemn manner, that never,
for the rest of his life, would he give quarter to any Spaniard who
might fall into his hands, and he, moreover, threatened that any kind of
vengeance which should become possible for the buccaneers and French
united, to inflict upon the Spanish ships, or upon the town of
Campeachy, should be taken as soon as possible after he should hear of
any injury that might be inflicted upon the unfortunate men who were
then lying imprisoned in the fortress.
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