Commodore Junk — page 183: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

176 COMMODORE JUNK. gulf and the islands that formed the eastern barrier rang with the news of his deeds. Government heard what was said, and replied that five years before they had sent outa ship to capture Commodore Junk, that there was a severe engagement, and the captain was taken and hung, and afterwards gibbeted off the port where his deeds obtained most fame. To which the Bristol merchants replied in a further petition that though it was as the Government stated, Commodore Junk’s body had been taken down from the gibbet soon after it was hung up, that he had come to life again, and that his deeds were now ten times worse than before. Moreover, that somewhere or another on the western shores of the great Mexican Gulf, he had a retreat where he lived in great luxury when ashore; that maidens, wives, and widows had been captured and taken there to live a life of terrible cap- tivity ; that many bloody deeds had been done after desperate fighting, men being compelled to walk the plank or sent adrift in small boats far from land; and that, though spies had been sent out, no one had been able to discover the mysterious retreat, even the Indians who had been bribed to go returning with their heads minus their ears, or else with strange tales that the buccaneer was under the protection of the great thunder gods, whose home was in the burning mountains, and that it was useless to try to destroy him and his crew. Moreover, the men of Bristol said that it was a crying shame that their ships and cargoes should not have adequate protection, seeing what a deal they paid to the revenue for the goods they imported, and that one of His Majesty’s ships ought to be more than a match for all the thunder gods in Central America, and His Majesty’s petitioners would ever pray. The king’s minister of the time said that the men of Bristol Gomichbooksneo