But after making several reflections upon the circumstances of my life, and how little way this would go towards settling me in the world, I resolv’d to go to Lisbon and see if I might not come by some information of the state of my plantation in the Brasils, and of what was become of my partner, who, I had reason to suppose, had some years past given me over for dead.
When I arrived, April following, in Lisbon I found, to my particular satisfaction, my friend Captain Amaral who first took me up at sea off the shore of Africk. He was now grown old, and had left off going to sea, having put his son, Zachary, who was far from a young man, into his ship and who still used the Brasil trade.
After some passionate expressions of the old acquaintance between us, I inquired after my plantation and my partner. Amaral told me he had not been in the Brasils for about nine years, but he could assure me when he came away my partner was living. The trustees, whom I had joined with him to take cognizance of my part, were both dead. However, he believed I would have a very good account of the improvement of the plantation. Upon the general belief of my being cast away and drowned, my trustees had given in the account of the produce of my part of the plantation to the procurator-fiscal, who had appropriated it, in case I never came to claim it, one-third to the king, and two-thirds to the monastery of St. Augustine, to be expended for the benefit of the poor, and for the conversion of the Indians to the Catholic faith.
I asked him if he knew to what height of improvement he had brought the plantation, and whether he thought it might be worth looking after.
Amaral told me he knew my partner was grown exceeding rich upon the enjoying his part of it. As to my being restored to a quiet possession of it, there was no question to be made of that, my partner being alive to witness my title and my name being also enrolled in the register of the country. Also the old captain told me the survivors of my two trustees were very fair honest people and very wealthy. He believed I would not only have their assistance for putting me in possession, but would find a very considerable sum of money in their hands for my account.
I showed myself a little concerned at this account, and inquired of Amaral how it came to pass the trustees should thus dispose of my effects when he knew I had made my will and had made him my universal heir. He told me that was true, but as there was no proof of my being dead, he could not act as executor. Besides, he was not willing to intermeddle with a thing so remote.
"But," said the old man, "I have one piece of news to tell you, which perhaps may not be so acceptable to you as the rest. Believing you were lost, your partner and trustees did offer to account with me, in your name, for six or eight of the first years' profits, which I received. There being at that time great disbursements, it did not amount to near so much as afterwards it produced. However," said the old man, "I shall give you a true account of what I have received, and how I have disposed of it."
The good man then began to explain his misfortunes, having lost his ship coming home to Lisbon about eleven years after my leaving the place. He had been obliged to make use of my money to recover his losses and buy him a share in a new ship. "However, my old friend," said he, "you shall not want a supply in your necessity. As soon as my son returns, you shall be fully satisfied." Upon this, he pulled out an old pouch, and gave me one hundred and sixty Portugal moidores in gold and giving the writings of his title to the ship, which his son was gone to the Brasils in, of which he was a quarter-part owner, and his son another, he put them both into my hands for security of the rest.
I was too much moved with the honesty and kindness of the poor man to be able to bear this. Remembering what he had done for me, how he had taken me up at sea, and how generously he had used me on all occasions, and how sincere a friend he was now to me, I could hardly refrain weeping at what he had said to me. I asked him if his circumstances admitted him to spare so much money at that time, and if it would not straiten him?
"I could not say," he told me. "However, it is your money, and you might want it more than I."
"And your son? Shall he not be displeased to find his ship sold from beneath his heels?"
At which Amaral became most reflective, and confided in me that his son did have a great hatred of me already, which surprised me to no end, for I had never met the youth. "Fear often turns to hate over time," he told me, "and Zachary had much call to fear you as a child, as he often told me."