came directly upon our men, as if it had been in a line-of-battle.
Our men, seeing so many of them, began to be frightened, for we lay
but in an ill posture to fight, and cried out to us to know what
they should do. I immediately called to the men that worked upon
the stages to slip them down, and get up the side into the ship,
and bade those in the boat to row round and come on board. The few
who were on board worked with all the strength and hands we had to
bring the ship to rights; however, neither the men upon the stages
nor those in the boats could do as they were ordered before the
Cochin Chinese were upon them, when two of their boats boarded our
longboat, and began to lay hold of the men as their prisoners.
The first man they laid hold of was an English seaman, a stout,
strong fellow, who having a musket in his hand, never offered to
fire it, but laid it down in the boat, like a fool, as I thought;
but he understood his business better than I could teach him, for
he grappled the Pagan, and dragged him by main force out of their
boat into ours, where, taking him by the ears, he beat his head so
against the boat’s gunnel that the fellow died in his hands. In
the meantime, a Dutchman, who stood next, took up the musket, and
with the butt-end of it so laid about him, that he knocked down
five of them who attempted to enter the boat. But this was doing
little towards resisting thirty or forty men, who, fearless because
ignorant of their danger, began to throw themselves into the
longboat, where we had but five men in all to defend it; but the
following accident, which deserved our laughter, gave our men a
complete victory.
Our carpenter being prepared to grave the outside of the ship, as
well as to pay the seams where he had caulked her to stop the
leaks, had got two kettles just let down into the boat, one filled
with boiling pitch, and the other with rosin, tallow, and oil, and
such stuff as the shipwrights use for that work; and the man that
attended the carpenter had a great iron ladle in his hand, with
which he supplied the men that were at work with the hot stuff.
Two of the enemy’s men entered the boat just where this fellow
stood in the foresheets; he immediately saluted them with a ladle
full of the stuff, boiling hot which so burned and scalded them,
being half-naked that they roared out like bulls, and, enraged with
the fire, leaped both into the sea. The carpenter saw it, and
cried out, “Well done, Jack! give them some more of it!” and
stepping forward himself, takes one of the mops, and dipping it in
the pitch-pot, he and his man threw it among them so plentifully
that, in short, of all the men in the three boats, there was not
one that escaped being scalded in a most frightful manner, and made
such a howling and crying that I never heard a worse noise.
I was never better pleased with a victory in my life; not only as
it was a perfect surprise to me, and that our danger was imminent
before, but as we got this victory without any bloodshed, except of
that man the seaman killed with his naked hands, and which I was
very much concerned at. Although it maybe a just thing, because
necessary (for there is no necessary wickedness in nature), yet I
thought it was a sad sort of life, when we must be always obliged
to be killing our fellow-creatures to preserve ourselves; and,
indeed, I think so still; and I would even now suffer a great deal
rather than I would take away the life even of the worst person
injuring me; and I believe all considering people, who know the
value of life, would be of my opinion, if they entered seriously
into the consideration of it.
All the while this was doing, my partner and I, who managed the