When the Spaniards came, the two Englishmen were so encouraged,
that they could not satisfy themselves to stay any longer there;
but taking five of the Spaniards, and themselves, with four muskets
and a pistol among them, and two stout quarter-staves, away they
went in quest of the savages. And first they came to the tree
where the men lay that had been killed; but it was easy to see that
some more of the savages had been there, for they had attempted to
carry their dead men away, and had dragged two of them a good way,
but had given it over. From thence they advanced to the first
rising ground, where they had stood and seen their camp destroyed,
and where they had the mortification still to see some of the
smoke; but neither could they here see any of the savages. They
then resolved, though with all possible caution, to go forward
towards their ruined plantation; but, a little before they came
thither, coming in sight of the sea-shore, they saw plainly the
savages all embarked again in their canoes, in order to be gone.
They seemed sorry at first that there was no way to come at them,
to give them a parting blow; but, upon the whole, they were very
well satisfied to be rid of them.
The poor Englishmen being now twice ruined, and all their
improvements destroyed, the rest all agreed to come and help them
to rebuild, and assist them with needful supplies. Their three
countrymen, who were not yet noted for having the least inclination
to do any good, yet as soon as they heard of it (for they, living
remote eastward, knew nothing of the matter till all was over),
came and offered their help and assistance, and did, very friendly,
work for several days to restore their habitation and make
necessaries for them. And thus in a little time they were set upon
their legs again.
About two days after this they had the farther satisfaction of
seeing three of the savages' canoes come driving on shore, and, at
some distance from them, two drowned men, by which they had reason
to believe that they had met with a storm at sea, which had overset
some of them; for it had blown very hard the night after they went
off. However, as some might miscarry, so, on the other hand,
enough of them escaped to inform the rest, as well of what they had
done as of what had happened to them; and to whet them on to
another enterprise of the same nature, which they, it seems,
resolved to attempt, with sufficient force to carry all before
them; for except what the first man had told them of inhabitants,
they could say little of it of their own knowledge, for they never
saw one man; and the fellow being killed that had affirmed it, they
had no other witness to confirm it to, them.
CHAPTER V--A GREAT VICTORY
It was five or six months after this before they heard any more of
the savages, in which time our men were in hopes they had either
forgot their former bad luck, or given over hopes of better; when,
on a sudden, they were invaded with a most formidable fleet of no
less than eight-and-twenty canoes, full of savages, armed with bows
and arrows, great clubs, wooden swords, and such like engines of
war; and they brought such numbers with them, that, in short, it
put all our people into the utmost consternation.
As they came on shore in the evening, and at the easternmost side
of the island, our men had that night to consult and consider what
to do. In the first place, knowing that their being entirely
concealed was their only safety before and would be much more so
now, while the number of their enemies would be so great, they
resolved, first of all, to take down the huts which were built for
the two Englishmen, and drive away their goats to the old cave;
because they supposed the savages would go directly thither, as
soon as it was day, to play the old game over again, though they
did not now land within two leagues of it. In the next place, they
drove away all the flocks of goats they had at the old bower, as I
called it, which belonged to the Spaniards; and, in short, left as
little appearance of inhabitants anywhere as was possible; and the
next morning early they posted themselves, with all their force, at
the plantation of the two men, to wait for their coming. As they
guessed, so it happened: these new invaders, leaving their canoes
at the east end of the island, came ranging along the shore,
directly towards the place, to the number of two hundred and fifty,
as near as our men could judge. Our army was but small indeed;
but, that which was worse, they had not arms for all their number.
The whole account, it seems, stood thus: first, as to men,
seventeen Spaniards, five Englishmen, old Friday, the three slaves
taken with the women, who proved very faithful, and three other
slaves, who lived with the Spaniards. To arm these, they had
eleven muskets, five pistols, three fowling-pieces, five muskets or
fowling-pieces which were taken by me from the mutinous seamen whom
I reduced, two swords, and three old halberds.
To their slaves they did not give either musket or fusee; but they
had each a halberd, or a long staff, like a quarter-staff, with a
great spike of iron fastened into each end of it, and by his side a
hatchet; also every one of our men had a hatchet. Two of the women
could not be prevailed upon but they would come into the fight, and
they had bows and arrows, which the Spaniards had taken from the
savages when the first action happened, which I have spoken of,
where the Indians fought with one another; and the women had
hatchets too.
The chief Spaniard, whom I described so often, commanded the whole;
and Will Atkins, who, though a dreadful fellow for wickedness, was
a most daring, bold fellow, commanded under him. The savages came
forward like lions; and our men, which was the worst of their fate,
had no advantage in their situation; only that Will Atkins, who now
proved a most useful fellow, with six men, was planted just behind
a small thicket of bushes as an advanced guard, with orders to let
the first of them pass by and then fire into the middle of them,
and as soon as he had fired, to make his retreat as nimbly as he
could round a part of the wood, and so come in behind the
Spaniards, where they stood, having a thicket of trees before them.
When the savages came on, they ran straggling about every way in
heaps, out of all manner of order, and Will Atkins let about fifty
of them pass by him; then seeing the rest come in a very thick
throng, he orders three of his men to fire, having loaded their
muskets with six or seven bullets apiece, about as big as large
pistol-bullets. How many they killed or wounded they knew not, but
the consternation and surprise was inexpressible among the savages;
they were frightened to the last degree to hear such a dreadful
noise, and see their men killed, and others hurt, but see nobody
that did it; when, in the middle of their fright, Will Atkins and
his other three let fly again among the thickest of them; and in
less than a minute the first three, being loaded again, gave them a
third volley.
Had Will Atkins and his men retired immediately, as soon as they
had fired, as they were ordered to do, or had the rest of the body
been at hand to have poured in their shot continually, the savages
had been effectually routed; for the terror that was among them
came principally from this, that they were killed by the gods with
thunder and lightning, and could see nobody that hurt them. But
Will Atkins, staying to load again, discovered the cheat: some of
the savages who were at a distance spying them, came upon them
behind; and though Atkins and his men fired at them also, two or
three times, and killed above twenty, retiring as fast as they
could, yet they wounded Atkins himself, and killed one of his
fellow-Englishmen with their arrows, as they did afterwards one
Spaniard, and one of the Indian slaves who came with the women.
This slave was a most gallant fellow, and fought most desperately,
killing five of them with his own hand, having no weapon but one of
the armed staves and a hatchet.
Our men being thus hard laid at, Atkins wounded, and two other men
killed, retreated to a rising ground in the wood; and the
Spaniards, after firing three volleys upon them, retreated also;
for their number was so great, and they were so desperate, that
though above fifty of them were killed, and more than as many
wounded, yet they came on in the teeth of our men, fearless of
danger, and shot their arrows like a cloud; and it was observed
that their wounded men, who were not quite disabled, were made
outrageous by their wounds, and fought like madmen.
When our men retreated, they left the Spaniard and the Englishman
that were killed behind them: and the savages, when they came up
to them, killed them over again in a wretched manner, breaking
their arms, legs, and heads, with their clubs and wooden swords,
like true savages; but finding our men were gone, they did not seem
inclined to pursue them, but drew themselves up in a ring, which
is, it seems, their custom, and shouted twice, in token of their
victory; after which, they had the mortification to see several of
their wounded men fall, dying with the mere loss of blood.
The Spaniard governor having drawn his little body up together upon
a rising ground, Atkins, though he was wounded, would have had them
march and charge again all together at once: but the Spaniard
replied, "Seignior Atkins, you see how their wounded men fight; let
them alone till morning; all the wounded men will be stiff and sore
with their wounds, and faint with the loss of blood; and so we
shall have the fewer to engage." This advice was good: but Will
Atkins replied merrily, "That is true, seignior, and so shall I
too; and that is the reason I would go on while I am warm." "Well,
Seignior Atkins," says the Spaniard, "you have behaved gallantly,
and done your part; we will fight for you if you cannot come on;
but I think it best to stay till morning:" so they waited.
But as it was a clear moonlight night, and they found the savages
in great disorder about their dead and wounded men, and a great
noise and hurry among them where they lay, they afterwards resolved
to fall upon them in the night, especially if they could come to
give them but one volley before they were discovered, which they
had a fair opportunity to do; for one of the Englishmen in whose
quarter it was where the fight began, led them round between the
woods and the seaside westward, and then turning short south, they
came so near where the thickest of them lay, that before they were
seen or heard eight of them fired in among them, and did dreadful
execution upon them; in half a minute more eight others fired after
them, pouring in their small shot in such a quantity that abundance
were killed and wounded; and all this while they were not able to
see who hurt them, or which way to fly.
The Spaniards charged again with the utmost expedition, and then
divided themselves into three bodies, and resolved to fall in among
them all together. They had in each body eight persons, that is to
say, twenty-two men and the two women, who, by the way, fought
desperately. They divided the firearms equally in each party, as
well as the halberds and staves. They would have had the women
kept back, but they said they were resolved to die with their
husbands. Having thus formed their little army, they marched out
from among the trees, and came up to the teeth of the enemy,
shouting and hallooing as loud as they could; the savages stood all
together, but were in the utmost confusion, hearing the noise of
our men shouting from three quarters together. They would have
fought if they had seen us; for as soon as we came near enough to
be seen, some arrows were shot, and poor old Friday was wounded,
though not dangerously. But our men gave them no time, but running
up to them, fired among them three ways, and then fell in with the
butt-ends of their muskets, their swords, armed staves, and
hatchets, and laid about them so well that, in a word, they set up
a dismal screaming and howling, flying to save their lives which
way soever they could.
Our men were tired with the execution, and killed or mortally
wounded in the two fights about one hundred and eighty of them; the
rest, being frightened out of their wits, scoured through the woods
and over the hills, with all the speed that fear and nimble feet
could help them to; and as we did not trouble ourselves much to
pursue them, they got all together to the seaside, where they
landed, and where their canoes lay. But their disaster was not at
an end yet; for it blew a terrible storm of wind that evening from
the sea, so that it was impossible for them to go off; nay, the
storm continuing all night, when the tide came up their canoes were
most of them driven by the surge of the sea so high upon the shore
that it required infinite toil to get them off; and some of them
were even dashed to pieces against the beach. Our men, though glad
of their victory, yet got little rest that night; but having
refreshed themselves as well as they could, they resolved to march
to that part of the island where the savages were fled, and see
what posture they were in. This necessarily led them over the
place where the fight had been, and where they found several of the
poor creatures not quite dead, and yet past recovering life; a
sight disagreeable enough to generous minds, for a truly great man
though obliged by the law of battle to destroy his enemy, takes no
delight in his misery. However, there was no need to give any
orders in this case; for their own savages, who were their
servants, despatched these poor creatures with their hatchets.
At length they came in view of the place where the more miserable
remains of the savages' army lay, where there appeared about a
&
nbsp; hundred still; their posture was generally sitting upon the ground,
with their knees up towards their mouth, and the head put between
the two hands, leaning down upon the knees. When our men came
within two musket-shots of them, the Spaniard governor ordered two
muskets to be fired without ball, to alarm them; this he did, that
by their countenance he might know what to expect, whether they
were still in heart to fight, or were so heartily beaten as to be
discouraged, and so he might manage accordingly. This stratagem
took: for as soon as the savages heard the first gun, and saw the
flash of the second, they started up upon their feet in the
greatest consternation imaginable; and as our men advanced swiftly
towards them, they all ran screaming and yelling away, with a kind
of howling noise, which our men did not understand, and had never
heard before; and thus they ran up the hills into the country.
At first our men had much rather the weather had been calm, and
they had all gone away to sea: but they did not then consider that
this might probably have been the occasion of their coming again in
such multitudes as not to be resisted, or, at least, to come so
many and so often as would quite desolate the island, and starve
them. Will Atkins, therefore, who notwithstanding his wound kept
always with them, proved the best counsellor in this case: his
advice was, to take the advantage that offered, and step in between
them and their boats, and so deprive them of the capacity of ever
returning any more to plague the island. They consulted long about
this; and some were against it for fear of making the wretches fly
to the woods and live there desperate, and so they should have them
to hunt like wild beasts, be afraid to stir out about their
business, and have their plantations continually rifled, all their
tame goats destroyed, and, in short, be reduced to a life of
continual distress.
Will Atkins told them they had better have to do with a hundred men
than with a hundred nations; that, as they must destroy their
boats, so they must destroy the men, or be all of them destroyed
themselves. In a word, he showed them the necessity of it so
plainly that they all came into it; so they went to work
immediately with the boats, and getting some dry wood together from
a dead tree, they tried to set some of them on fire, but they were
so wet that they would not burn; however, the fire so burned the
upper part that it soon made them unfit for use at sea.
When the Indians saw what they were about, some of them came
running out of the woods, and coming as near as they could to our
men, kneeled down and cried, "Oa, Oa, Waramokoa," and some other
words of their language, which none of the others understood
anything of; but as they made pitiful gestures and strange noises,
it was easy to understand they begged to have their boats spared,
and that they would be gone, and never come there again. But our
men were now satisfied that they had no way to preserve themselves,
or to save their colony, but effectually to prevent any of these
people from ever going home again; depending upon this, that if
even so much as one of them got back into their country to tell the
story, the colony was undone; so that, letting them know that they
should not have any mercy, they fell to work with their canoes, and
destroyed every one that the storm had not destroyed before; at the
sight of which, the savages raised a hideous cry in the woods,
which our people heard plain enough, after which they ran about the
island like distracted men, so that, in a word, our men did not
really know what at first to do with them. Nor did the Spaniards,
with all their prudence, consider that while they made those people
thus desperate, they ought to have kept a good guard at the same
time upon their plantations; for though it is true they had driven
away their cattle, and the Indians did not find out their main
retreat, I mean my old castle at the hill, nor the cave in the