Call it what you like. It was never intended to make it to Peru at all.
"And neither were we ..."
Once the raiders took all the gold onto the cruiser, the boarding party shot one more of the marines, then returned to their warship.
"We breathed a sigh of relief when that ship turned away from us and started heading north," Pegg said. "But what fools we were!"
The cruiser sailed away about ten miles, then, without warning, launched a Swedish-built RBS-15 antiship missile at Peg's freighter.
"I saw it coming," Pegg said. "I had just enough time to shout a warning to my crew. About half of us made it over the side before the missile hit . . ."
The powerful RBS-15 hit the freighter just above the waterline and instantly obliterated the vessel. Pegg and another crewman -a man they all called
"Goldie" because of his mouthful of gold teeth - were blown out of the water and landed in a sea of burning oil and debris.
"We caught hold of a big chunk of wood that went floating by," Pegg said.
"Then we kicked our feet as fast as we could, just to get away from the burning wreckage."
Although they heard the cries from some of the other crewmen, they weren't able to find any of them in the smoke and darkness and confusion. They paddled around until dawn and finding no other signs of life, set out for the coast of Chile, luckily just three miles to the east.
The two men made landfall after 10 hours of grueling paddling, all the while, Pegg said, fighting off man-eating sharks with their bare fists. Once ashore they sought refuge in a nearby woods and soon met some villagers who gave them food and warm clothing.
"We were near a town called Tongo, Chile, which is about seven hundred miles south of the border with Peru," Pegg said. "The place was all but abandoned.
Only old people and young women lived there. We asked them: 'Where is everybody?' But they couldn't answer us very well because we didn't speak their language and they couldn't speak ours. We got the impression that all of the other villagers had
been taken away. Maybe by slavers, I remember thinking at the time."
The small harbor at Tongo was filled with fishing boats and Pegg and Goldie offered to somehow buy one of the vessels. Instead the villagers told them they could have one for free, if they agreed to take part in a strange ritual.
"They wanted us to make love to all of the young women in the village," Pegg claimed. "Their men were long gone and the young females were getting themselves damp . . ."
It took three weeks for Pegg and Goldie to fulfill their agreement. Once done, the villagers indicated that the seamen should take the best vessel in harbor as none of the boats would ever be used again anyway. Pegg selected the largest one in the small fleet -a 30-foot tuna boat -and set out.
"We decided to go north," Pegg said. "Even though that was the direction that the cruiser took, we knew it was better than going back down around the cape."
Staying as close to the shore as possible, they sailed the tuna boat up the South American west coast, catching fish along the way to sustain them. Using their engines only when necessary, the favorable currents took them up past Peru and Ecuador.
"We were going to sail it right up to California," Pegg said. "But off the coast of Colombia our engine started acting up. Then it died completely. At the same time the currents reversed and started to drag us due west, out to the open sea."
They drifted for another two weeks, Pegg said, their only nourishment coming from eating the huge sea turtles Pegg said he caught off the top of the waves with his bare hands.
Still, they had no water left and soon both men were near death.
"Two angels floated down and landed right on our stern," Pegg said. "Both Goldie and I were lying on the deck, too weak to move, just waiting for our Maker. I saw Goldie's spirit lift right out of his body, I did. But then I pleaded with seraphs to send him back. And they did . . .
"A day later we