We had gone into the enemy’s ground with seven hundred warriors — a little over one hundred of whom were missing when we left it — as, at that time, we could hardly muster six hundred. This septimation of our men was accompanied by a proportionate riddance of such encumbrances of the expedition as wore the shape of women and little ones.

A flake is the sailor's term for a turn in an ordinary coil, or for a complete tier in a flat coil, as a French or Flemish flake. The current dictionary form of the word is fake, a word that I have never heard used with this meaning. A Flemish flake is a spiral coil of one layer only.

'[…] Human laws we respect—ha, ha!—you and I, because they subserve our convenience, and just so long. When they tend to our destruction, 'tis, of course, another thing.'

England is under the rule of a patriarchy.