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
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