He added that he knew well this was a service of danger, since it might chance that there would be fighting, and he was loth to ask any man to risk life or limb against his will, especially as they came out to trade and not to fight.

Still, to those who chose to accompany them, should they win through safely, he promised double wage, and a present charged upon his estate, and would give them writings to that effect.

As for those who did not, they could leave the ship now before she sailed.
When he had finished, the sailormen, of whom there were about thirty, with the stout-hearted captain, Jacob Smith, a sturdy-built man of fifty years of age, at the head of them, conferred together, and at last, with one exception--that of a young new-married man, whose heart failed him--they accepted the offer, swearing that they would see the thing through to the end, were it good or ill, for they were all Englishmen, and no lovers of the Spaniards.

Moreover, so bitter a wrong stirred their blood.

Indeed, although for the most part they were not sailors, six of the twelve men who had ridden with them from London prayed that they might come too, for the love they had to Margaret, their master, and Peter; and they took them.