To their slaves they did not give either musket or fusil, but they had every one an halbert, 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 hatchets. 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 Spaniard governor, whom I have described so often, commanded the whole; and William 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 all 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, who were frighted 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, William Atkins and his other three let fly again among thethickest of them and in less than a minute the first three, being loaded again, gave them a third volley.
Had William 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; viz. that they were killed by the gods with thunder and lightning, and could see nobody that hurt them: but William 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 vollies 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 so 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 drewthemselves up in a kind of 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 him march, and charge them again all together at once: but the Spaniard replied, “Seignior Atkins, you see how their wounded men fight; let them alone till morning; all these 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.”
The advice was good; but Will Atkins replied merrily, “That’s true, Seignior, and so shall I too; and that’s 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 hurry and noise 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. This they had a fair opportunity to do; for one of the two Englishmen, in whose quarter it was where the fight began, led them round between the woods and the sea-side, westward, and 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-four, whereof were twenty-two men, and the two women, who, by the way, fought desperately.
They divided the fire-arms equally in each party, and so of the halberts and staves. They would have had the women keep 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; and 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 frighted 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 do; and as we did not trouble ourselves much to pursue them, they got all together to the sea-side, 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 seaward, so that it was impossible for them to put 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 themwere even dashed to pieces against the beach, or against one another.
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 order in this case; for their own savages, who were their servants, dispatched those 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 one hundred still: their posture was generally sitting upon the ground, with their knees up towards their mouth, and the head put between the hands, leaning down upon the knees.
When our men came within two musket-shot 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, viz. whether they were still in heart to fight, or were so heartily beaten, as to be dispirited and 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 yawling away, with a kind of an 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 hadbeen 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 clap 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 into the woods, and live there desperate; and so they should have them to hunt like wild beasts, be afraid to stir about their business, and have their plantation 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 one hundred men than with one 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 shewed 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 scarce burn. However, the fire so burned the upper part, that it soon made them unfit for swimming in the sea as boats. 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 any thing 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 return thither 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 ever 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 them, 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 at first what 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 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 their main retreat, I mean my old castle at the hill, nor the cave in the valley; yet they found out my plantation at the bower, and pulled it all to pieces, and all the fences and planting about it; trod all the corn under foot; tore up the vines and grapes, being just then almost ripe, and did our men an inestimable damage, though to themselves not one farthing’s-worth of service.
Though our men were able to fight them upon all occasions, yet they were in no condition to pursue them, or hunt them up and down; for as they were too nimble of foot for our men when they found them single, so our men durst not go about single for fear of being surrounded with their numbers: the best was, they had no weapons; for though they had bows they had no arrows left, nor any materials to make any, nor had they any edged tool or weapon among them. The extremity and distress they were reduced to was great, and indeed deplorable, but at the same time our men were also brought to very hard circumstances by them; for though their retreats were preserved,yet their provision was destroyed, and their harvest spoiled; and what to do or which way to turn themselves, they knew not; the only refuge they had now was the stock of cattle they had in the valley by the cave, and some little corn which grew there. The three Englishmen, William Atkins and his comrades, were now reduced to two, one of them being killed by an arrow, which struck him on the side of his head, just under the temples, so that he never spoke more; and it was very remarkable, that this was the same barbarous fellow who cut the poor savage slave with his hatchet, and who afterwards intended to have murdered the Spaniards.
I look upon their case to have been worse at this time than mine was at any time after I first discovered the grains of barley and rice, and got into the method of planting and raising my corn, and my tame cattle; for now they had, as I may say, an hundred wolves upon the island, which would devour every thing they could come at, yet could be very hardly come at themselves.
The first thing they concluded when they saw what their circumstances were, was, that they would, if possible, drive them up to the farther part of the island, south-east, that if any more savages came on shore, they might not find one another; then that they would daily hunt and harass them, and kill as many of them as they could come at, till they had reduced the number; and if they could at last tame them, and bring them to any thing, they would give them corn, and teach them how to plant, and live upon their daily Labour.
In order to this they followed them, and so terrified them with their guns, that in a few days, if any of them fired a gun at an Indian, if he did not hit him, yet he would fall down for fear; and so dreadfully frighted they were, that they kept out of sight farther and farther, till at last our men following them, and every day almost killing and wounding some of them, they kept up in the woods and hollow places so much,that it reduced them to the utmost misery for want of food; and many were afterwards found dead in the woods, without any hurt, but merely starved to death.
When our men found this, it made their hearts relent, and pity moved them; especially the Spaniard governor, who was the most gentleman-like, generous-minded man that ever I met with in my life; and he proposed, if possible, to take one of them alive, and bring him to understand what they meant, so far as to be able to act as interpreter, and to go among them, and see if they might be brought to some conditions that might be depended upon, to save their lives, and do us no spoil.
It was some time before any of them could be taken; but being weak, and half-starved, one of them was at last surprised, and made a prisoner: he was sullen at first, and would neither eat nor drink; but finding himself kindly used, and victuals given him, and no violence offered him, he at last grew tractable, and came to himself.
They brought old Friday to him, who talked often with him, and told him how kind the others would be to them all: that they would not only save their lives, but would give them a part of the island to live in, provided they would give satisfaction; that they should keep in their own bounds, and not come beyond them, to injure or prejudice others; and that they should have corn given them, to plant and make it grow for their bread, and some bread given them for their present subsistence; and old Friday bade the fellow go and talk with the rest of his countrymen, and hear what they said to it, assuring them that if they did not agree immediately they should all be destroyed.
The poor wretches, thoroughly humbled, and reduced in number to about thirty-seven, closed with the proposal at the first offer, and begged to have some food given them; upon which twelve Spaniards and two Englishmen, well armed, and three Indian slaves, and old Friday, marched to the place where theywere; the three Indian slaves carried them a large quantity of bread, and some rice boiled up to cakes, and dried in the sun, and three live goats; and they were ordered to go to the side of an hill, where they sat down, ate the provisions very thankfully, and were the most faithful fellows to their words that could be thought of; for except when they came to beg victuals and directions they never came out of their bounds; and there they lived when I came to the island, and I went to see them.
They had taught them both to plant corn, make bread, breed tame goats, and milk them; they wanted nothing but wives, and they soon would have been a nation: they were confined to a neck of land surrounded with high rocks behind them, and lying plain towards the sea before them, on the south-east corner of the island; they had land enough, and it was very good and fruitful; for they had a piece of land about a mile and a half broad, and three or four miles in length.
Our men taught them to make wooden spades, such as I made for myself; and gave among them twelve hatchets, and three or four knives; and there they lived, the most subjected innocent creatures that were ever heard of.
After this the colony enjoyed a perfect tranquillity with respect to the savages, till I came to revisit them, which was in about two years. Not but that now and then some canoes of savages came on shore for their triumphal, unnatural feasts; but as they were of several nations, and, perhaps, had never heard of those that came before, or the reason of it, they did not make any search or inquiry after their countrymen; and if they had, it would have been very hard for them to have found them out.
Thus, I think, I have given a full account of all that happened to them to my return, at least that was worth notice. The Indians, or savages, were wonderfully civilized by them, and they frequently went among them; but forbid, on pain of death, any of the Indianscoming to them, because they would not have their settlement betrayed again.
One thing was very remarkable, viz. that they taught the savages to make wicker-work, or baskets; but they soon outdid their masters; for they made abundance of most ingenious things in wicker-work; particularly all sorts of baskets, sieves, bird-cages, cupboards, &c. as also chairs to sit on, stools, beds, couches, and abundance of other things, being very ingenious at such work when they were once put in the way of it.
My coming was a particular relief to these people, because we furnished them with knives, scissars, spades, shovels, pickaxes, and all things of that kind which they could want.
With the help of these tools they were so very handy, that they came at last to build up their huts, or houses, very handsomely; raddling, or working it up like basket-work all the way round, which was a very extraordinary piece of ingenuity, and looked very odd; but was an exceeding good fence, as well against heat, as against all sorts of vermin; and our men were so taken with it, that they got the wild savages to come and do the like for them; so that when I came to see the two Englishmen’s colonies, they looked, at a distance, as if they lived all like bees in a hive; and as for Will Atkins, who was now become a very industrious, necessary, and sober fellow, he had made himself such a tent of basket work as I believe was never seen. It was one hundred and twenty paces round on the outside, as I measured by my steps; the walls were as close worked as a basket, in pannels or squares, thirty-two in number, and very strong, standing about seven feet high: in the middle was another not above twenty-two paces round, but built stronger, being eight-square in its form, and in the eight corners stood eight very strong posts, round the top of which he laid strong pieces, joined together with wooden pins, from which he raised a pyramid before the roof of eight rafters, very handsome I assure you, and joined together very well, though he had no nails, andonly a few iron spikes, which he had made himself too, out of the old iron that I had left there; and indeed this fellow shewed abundance of ingenuity in several things which he had no knowledge of; he made himself a forge, with a pair of wooden bellows to blow the fire; he made himself charcoal for his work, and he formed out of one of the iron crows a middling good anvil to hammer upon; in this manner he made many things, but especially hooks, staples and spikes, bolts and hinges. But to return to the house: after he pitched the roof of his innermost tent, he worked it up between the rafters with basket-work, so firm, and thatched that over again so ingeniously with rice-straw, and over that a large leaf of a tree, which covered the top, that his house was as dry as if it had been tiled or slated. Indeed he owned that the savages made the basket-work for him.
The outer circuit was covered, as a lean-to, all round his inner, apartment, and long rafters lay from the thirty two angles to the top posts of the inner house, being about twenty feet distant; so that there was a space like a walk within the outer wicker wall, and without the inner, near twenty feet wide.
The inner place he partitioned off with the same wicker work, but much fairer, and divided into six apartments, for that he had six rooms on a floor, and out of every one of these there was a door: first, into the entry, or coming into the main tent; and another door into the space or walk that was round it; so that this walk was also divided into six equal parts, which served not only for a retreat, but to store up any necessaries which the family had occasion for. These six spaces not taking up the whole circumference, what other apartments the outer circle had, were thus ordered: as soon as you were in at the door of the outer circle, you had a short passage straight before you to the door of the inner house; but on either side was a wicker partition, and a door in it, by which you went first into a large room or storehouse, twenty feet wide,and about thirty feet long, and through that into another not quite so long: so that in the outer circle were ten handsome rooms, six of which were only to be come at through the apartments of the inner tent, and served as closets or retired rooms to the respective chambers of the inner circle; and four large warehouses or barns, or what you please to call them, which went in through one another, two on either hand of the passage that led through the outer door to the inner tent.
Such a piece of basket-work, I believe, was never seen in the world; nor an house or tent so neatly contrived, much less so built. In this great beehive lived the three families; that is to say, Will Atkins and his companions; the third was killed, but his wife remained with three children; for she was, it seems, big with child when he died, and the other two were not at all backward to give the widow her full share of every thing, I mean as to their corn, milk, grapes, &c. and when they killed a kid, or found a turtle on the shore; so that they all lived well enough, though it was true, they were not so industrious as the other two, as has been observed already.
One thing, however, cannot be omitted, viz. that, as for religion, I don’t know that there was any thing of that kind among them; they pretty often indeed put one another in mind that there was a God, by the very common method of seamen, viz. swearing by his name; nor were their poor, ignorant, savage wives much the better for having been married to Christians as we must call them; for as they knew very little of God themselves, so they were utterly incapable of entering into any discourse with their wives about a God or to talk any thing to them concerning religion.
The utmost of all the improvement which I can say the wives had made from them, was, that they had taught them to speak English pretty well; and all the children they had, which were near twenty in all were taught to speak English too, from their first learning to speak, though they at first spoke it in a verybroken manner, like their mothers. There were none of those children above six years old when I came thither; for it was not much above seven years that they had fetched these five savage ladies over, but they had all been pretty fruitful, for they had all children, more or less: I think the cook’s mate’s wife was big of her sixth child; and the mothers were all a good sort of well-governed, quiet, laborious women, modest and decent, helpful to one another, mighty observant and subject to their masters, I cannot call them husbands; and wanted nothing but to be well instructed in the Christian religion, and to be legally married; both which were happily brought about afterwards by my means, or at least by the consequence of my coming among them.
Having thus given an account of the colony in general, and pretty much of my five runagate Englishmen, I must say something of the Spaniards, who were the main body of the family, and in whose story there are some incidents also remarkable enough.
I had a great many discourses with them about their circumstances when they were among the savages; they told me readily, that they had no instances to give of their application or ingenuity in that country; that they were a poor, miserable, dejected handful of people; that if means had been put into their hands, they had yet so abandoned themselves to despair, and so sunk under the weight of their misfortunes, that they thought of nothing but starving. One of them, a grave and very sensible man, told me he was convinced they were in the wrong; that it was not the part of wise men to give up themselves to their misery, but always to take hold of the helps which reason offered, as well for present support, as for future deliverance; he told me that grief was the most senseless insignificant passion in the world, for that it regarded only things past, which were generally impossible to be recalled or to be remedied, but had no view to things to come, and had no share in any thing that looked like deliverance, but rather added to the afflictionthan proposed a remedy; and upon this he repeated a Spanish proverb, which though I cannot repeat in just the same words that he spoke it, yet I remember I made it into an English proverb of my own, thus;
In trouble to be troubled,Is to have your trouble doubled.
He then ran on in remarks upon all the little improvements I had made in my solitude; my unwearied application, as he called it, and how I had made a condition, which in its circumstances was at first much worse than theirs, a thousand times more happy than theirs was, even now when they were all together. He told me it was remarkable that Englishmen had a greater presence of mind in their distress than any people that ever he met with; that their unhappy nation, and the Portuguese, were the worst men in the world to struggle with misfortunes; for that their first step in dangers, after common efforts are over, was always to despair, lie down under it and die, without rousing their thoughts up to proper remedies for escape.
I told him their case and mine differed exceedingly; that they were cast upon the shore without necessaries, without supply of food, or of present sustenance, till they could provide it; that it is true, I had this disadvantage and discomfort, that I was alone; but then the supplies I had providentially thrown into my hands, by the unexpected driving of the ship on shore, was such a help as would have encouraged any creature in the world to have applied himself as I had done. “Seignior,” says the Spaniard, “had we poor Spaniards been in your case we should never have gotten half those things out of the ship as you did.” “Nay,” says he, “we should never have found means to have gotten a raft to carry them, or to have gotten a raft on shore without boat or sail; and how much less should we have done,” said he, “if any of us had been alone!” Well, I desired him to abate hiscompliment, and go on with the history of their coming on shore, where they landed. He told me they unhappily landed at a place where there were people without provisions; whereas, had they had the common sense to have put off to sea again, and gone to another island a little farther, they had found provisions though without people; there being an island that way, as they had been told, where there were provisions though no people; that is to say, that the Spaniards of Trinidad had frequently been there, and filled the island with goats and hogs at several times, where they have bred in such multitudes, and where turtle and sea-fowls were in such plenty, that they could have been in no want of flesh though they had found no bread; whereas here they were only sustained with a few roots and herbs, which they understood not, and which had no substance in them, and which the inhabitants gave them sparingly enough, and who could treat them no better unless they would turn cannibals, and eat men’s flesh, which was the great dainty of the country.
They gave me an account how many ways they strove to civilize the savages they were with, and to teach them rational customs in the ordinary way of living, but in vain; and how they retorted it upon them as unjust, that they, who came thither for assistance and support, should attempt to set up for instructors of those that gave them bread; intimating, it seems, that none should set up for the instructors of others but those who could live without them.
They gave me dismal accounts of the extremities they were driven to; how sometimes they were many days without any food at all, the island they were upon being inhabited by a sort of savages that lived more indolent, and for that reason were less supplied with the necessaries of life than they had reason to believe others were in the same part of the world; and yet they found that these savages were less ravenous and voracious than those who had better supplies of food.
Also they added, that they could not but see with what demonstrations of wisdom and goodness the governing providence of God directs the event of things in the world, which they said appeared in their circumstances; for if, pressed by the hardships they were under, and the barrenness of the country where they were, they had searched after a better place to live in, they had then been out of the way of the relief that happened to them by my means.
Then they gave me an account how the savages whom they lived among expected them to go out with them into their wars; and it was true, that as they had fire-arms with them, had they not had the disaster to lose their ammunition, they should not have been serviceable only to their friends, but have made themselves terrible both to friends and enemies; but being without powder and shot, and in a condition that they could not in reason deny to go out with their landlords to their wars; when they came in the field of battle they were in a worse condition than the savages themselves, for they neither had bows nor arrows, nor could they use those the savages gave them, so that they could do nothing but stand still and be wounded with arrows, till they came up to the teeth of their enemy; and then indeed the three halberts they had were of use to them, and they would often drive a whole little army before them with those halberts and sharpened sticks put into the muzzles of their muskets: but that for all this, they were sometimes surrounded with multitudes, and in great danger from their arrows; till at last they found the way to make themselves large targets of wood, which they covered with skins of wild beasts, whose names they knew not, and these covered them from the arrows of the savages; that notwithstanding these, they were sometimes in great danger, and were once five of them knocked down together with the clubs of the savages, which was the time when one of them was taken prisoner, that is to say, the Spaniard whom I had relieved; that at first they thought he had beenkilled, but when afterwards they heard he was taken prisoner, they were under the greatest grief imaginable, and would willingly have all ventured their lives to have rescued him.
They told me, that when they were so knocked down, the rest of their company rescued them, and stood over them fighting till they were come to themselves, all but he who they thought had been dead; and then they made their way with their halberts and pieces, standing close together in a line, through a body of above a thousand savages, beating down all that came in their way, got the victory over their enemies, but to their great sorrow, because it was with the loss of their friend; whom the other party, finding him alive, carried off with some others, as I gave an account in my former.
They described, most affectionately, how they were surprised with joy at the return of their friend and companion in misery, who they thought had been devoured by wild beasts of the worst kind, viz. by wild men; and yet how more and more they were surprised with the account he gave them of his errand, and that there was a Christian in a place near, much more one that was able, and had humanity enough to contribute to their deliverance.
They described how they were astonished at the sight of the relief I sent them, and at the appearance of loaves of bread, things they had not seen since their coming to that miserable place; how often they crossed it, and blessed it as bread sent from heaven; and what a reviving cordial it was to their spirits to taste it, as also of the other things I had sent for their supply. And, after all, they would have told me something of the joy they were in at the sight of a boat and pilots to carry them away to the person and place from whence all these new comforts came; but they told me it was impossible to express it by words, for their excessive joy driving them to unbecoming extravagancies, they had no way to describe them but by telling me that they bordered upon lunacy, havingno way to give vent to their passion suitable to the sense that was upon them; that in some it worked one way, and in some another; and that some of them, through a surprise of joy, would burst out into tears; others be half mad, and others immediately faint. This discourse extremely affected me, and called to my mind Friday’s ecstasy when he met his father, and the poor people’s ecstasy when I took them up at sea, after their ship was on fire; the mate of the ship’s joy, when he found himself delivered in the place where he expected to perish; and my own joy, when after twenty-eight years captivity I found a good ship ready to carry me to my own country. All these things made me more sensible of the relation of these poor men, and more affected with it.
Having thus given a view of the state of things as I found them, I must relate the heads of what I did for these people, and the condition in which I left them. It was their opinion, and mine too, that they would be troubled no more with the savages; or that, if they were, they would be able to cut them off, if they were twice as many as before; so that they had no concern about that. Then I entered into a serious discourse with the Spaniard whom I called governor, about their stay in the island; for as I was not come to carry any of them off, so it would not be just to carry off some and leave others, who perhaps would be unwilling to stay if their strength was diminished.
On the other hand I told them, I came to establish them there, not to remove them; and then I let them know that I had brought with me relief of sundry kinds for them; that I had been at a great charge to supply them with all things necessary, as well for their convenience as their defence; and that I had such particular persons with me, as well to increase and recruit their number, as by the particular necessary employments which they were bred to, being artificers, to assist them in those things in which at present they were to seek.
They were all together when I talked thus to them;and before I delivered to them the stores I had brought, I asked them, one by one, if they had entirely forgot and buried the first animosities that had been among them, and could shake hands with one another, and engage in a strict friendship and union of interest, so that there might be no more misunderstandings or jealousies.
William Atkins, with abundance of frankness and good humour, said, they had met with afflictions enough to make them all sober, and enemies enough to make them all friends: that for his part he would live and die with them; and was so far from designing any thing against the Spaniards, that he owned they had done nothing to him but what his own bad humour made necessary, and what he would have done, and perhaps much worse, in their case; and that he would ask them pardon, if I desired it, for the foolish and brutish things he had done to them; and was very willing and desirous of living on terms of entire friendship and union with them; and would do any thing that lay in his power, to convince them of it: and as for going to England, he cared not if he did not go thither these twenty years.
The Spaniards said, they had indeed at first disarmed and excluded William Atkins and his two countrymen, for their ill conduct, as they had let me know; and they appealed to me for the necessity they were under to do so; but that William Atkins had behaved himself so bravely in the great fight they had with the savages, and on several occasions since, and had shewed himself so faithful to, and concerned for the general interest of them all, that they had forgotten all that was past, and thought he merited as much to be trusted with arms, and supplied with necessaries, as any of them; and that they had testified their satisfaction in him, by committing the command to him, next to the governor himself; and as they had an entire confidence in him and all his countrymen, so they acknowledged they had merited that confidence byall the methods that honest men could merit to be valued and trusted; and they most heartily embraced the occasion of giving me this assurance, that they would never have any interest separate from one another.
Upon these frank and open declarations of friendship, we appointed the next day to dine all together, and indeed we made a splendid feast. I caused the ship’s cook and his mate to come on shore and dress our dinner, and the old cook’s mate we had on shore assisted. We brought on shore six pieces of good beef, and four pieces of pork, out of the ship’s provision, with our punch-bowl, and materials to fill it; and, in particular, I gave them ten bottles of French claret, and ten bottles of English beer, things that neither the Spaniards nor the Englishmen had tasted for many years; and which it may be supposed they were exceeding glad of.
The Spaniards added to our feast five whole kids, which the cooks roasted; and three of them were sent, covered up close, on board our ship to the seamen, that they might feast on fresh meat from on shore, as we did with their salt meal from on board.
After this feast, at which we were very innocently merry, I brought out my cargo of goods, wherein, that there might be no dispute about dividing, I shewed them that there was sufficient for them all; and desired that they might all take an equal quantity of the goods that were for wearing; that is to say, equal when made up. As first, I distributed linen sufficient to make every one of them four shirts; and, at the Spaniards’ request, afterwards made them up six; these were exceeding comfortable to them, having been what, as I may say, they had long since forgot the use of, or what it was to wear them.
I allotted the thin English stuffs, which I mentioned before, to make every one a light coat like a frock, which I judged fittest for the heat of the season, cool and loose; and ordered, that whenever they decayed,they should make more, as they thought fit. The like for pumps, shoes, stockings, and hats, &c.
I cannot express what pleasure, what satisfaction, sat upon the countenances of all these poor men when they saw the care I had taken of them, and how well I had furnished them; they told me I was a father to them; and that having such a correspondent as I was, in so remote a part of the world, it would make them forget that they were left in a desolate place; and they all voluntarily engaged to me not to leave the place without my consent.
Then I presented to them the people I had brought with me, particularly the tailor, the smith, and the two carpenters, all of them most necessary people; but above all, my general artificer, than whom they could not name any thing that was more needful to them; and the tailor, to shew his concern for them, went to work immediately, and, with my leave, made them every one a shirt the first thing he did; and, which was still more, he taught the women not only how to sew and stitch, and use the needle, but made them assist to make the shirts for their husbands and for all the rest.
As for the carpenters, I scarce need mention how useful they were, for they took in pieces all my clumsy unhandy things, and made them clever convenient tables, stools, bedsteads, cupboards, lockers, shelves, and every thing they wanted of that kind.
But to let them see how nature made artificers at first, I carried the carpenters to see William Atkins’s basket house, as I called it, and they both owned they never saw an instance of such natural ingenuity before, nor any thing so regular and so handily built, at least of its kind; and one of them, when he saw it, after musing a good while, turning about to me, “I am sure,” says he, “that man has no need of us; you need do nothing but give him tools.”
Then I brought them out all my store of tools, and gave every man a digging spade, a shovel, and a rake, for we had no harrows or ploughs; and to everyseparate place a pickaxe, a crow, a broadaxe, and a saw; always appointing, that as often as any were broken, or worn out, they should be supplied, without grudging, out of the general stores that I left behind.
Nails, staples, hinges, hammers, chisels, knives, scissors, and all sorts of tools and iron-work, they had without tale as they required; for no man would care to take more than he wanted, and he must be a fool that would waste or spoil them on any account whatever. And for the use of the smith I left two tons of unwrought iron for a supply.
My magazine of powder and arms which I brought them, was such, even to profusion, that they could not but rejoice at them; for now they could march, as I used to do, with a musket upon each shoulder, if there was occasion; and were able to fight a thousand savages, if they had but some little advantages of situation, which also they could not miss of if they had occasion.
I carried on shore with me the young man whose mother was starved to death, and the maid also: she was a sober, well-educated, religious young woman, and behaved so inoffensively, that every one gave her a good word. She had, indeed, an unhappy life with us, there being no woman in the ship but herself; but she bore it with patience. After a while, seeing things so well ordered, and in so fine a way of thriving upon my island, and considering that they had neither business nor acquaintance in the East Indies, or reason for taking so long a voyage; I say, considering all this, both of them came to me, and desired I would give them leave to remain on the island, and be entered among my family, as they called it.
I agreed to it readily, and they had a little plot of ground allotted to them, where they had three tents or houses set up, surrounded with a basket-work, palisaded like Atkins’s, and adjoining to his plantation. Their tents were contrived so, that they had each of them a room, a part to lodge in, and a middle tent, like a great storehouse, to lay all their goods in, andto eat and drink in. And now the other two Englishmen moved their habitation to the same place, and so the island was divided into three colonies, and no more; viz. the Spaniards, with old Friday, and the first servants, at my old habitation under the hill, which was, in a word, the capital city, and where they had so enlarged and extended their works, as well under as on the outside of the hill, that they lived, though perfectly concealed, yet full at large. Never was there such a little city in a wood, and so hid, I believe, in any part of the world; for I verily believe a thousand men might have ranged the island a month, and if they had not known there was such a thing, and looked on purpose for it, they would not have found it; for the trees stood so thick and so close, and grew so fast matted into one another, that nothing but cutting them down first, could discover the place, except the two narrow entrances where they went in and out, could be found, which was not very easy. One of them was just down at the water’s edge, on the side of the creek; and it was afterwards above two hundred yards to the place; and the other was up the ladder at twice, as I have already formerly described it; and they had a large wood, thick planted, also on the top of the hill, which contained above an acre, which grew apace, and covered the place from all discovery there, with only one narrow place between two trees, not easy to be discovered, to enter on that side.
The other colony was that of Will Atkins, where there were four families of Englishmen, I mean those I had left there, with their wives and children; three savages that were slaves; the widow and children of the Englishman that was killed; the young man and the maid; and by the way, we made a wife of her also before we went away. There were also the two carpenters and the tailor, whom I brought with me for them; also the smith, who was a very necessary man to them, especially as the gunsmith, to take care of their arms; and my other man, whom I calledJack of all Trades, who was himself as good almost as twenty men, for he was not only a very ingenious fellow, but a very merry fellow; and before I went away we married him to the honest maid that came with the youth in the ship, whom I mentioned before.
And now I speak of marrying, it brings me naturally to say something of the French ecclesiastic that I had brought with me out of the ship’s crew whom I took at sea. It is true, this man was a Roman, and perhaps it may give offence to some hereafter, if I leave any thing extraordinary upon record of a man, whom, before I begin, I must (to set him out in just colours) represent in terms very much to his disadvantage in the account of Protestants; as, first, that he was a Papist; secondly, a Popish priest; and thirdly, a French Popish priest.
But justice demands of me to give him a due character; and I must say, he was a grave, sober, pious, and most religious person; exact in his life, extensive in his charity, and exemplary in almost every thing he did. What then can any one say against my being very sensible of the value of such a man, notwithstanding his profession? though it may be my opinion, perhaps as well as the opinion of others who shall read this, that he was mistaken.
The first hour that I began to converse with him, after he had agreed to go with me to the East Indies, I found reason to delight exceedingly in his conversation; and he first began with me about religion, in the most obliging manner imaginable.
“Sir,” says he, “you have not only, under God” (and at that he crossed his breast), “saved my life, but you have admitted me to go this voyage in your ship, and by your obliging civility have taken me into your family, giving me an opportunity of free conversation. Now, Sir,” says he, “you see by my habit what my profession is, and I guess by your nation what yours is. I may think it is my duty, and doubtless it is so, to use my utmost endeavours on all occasions to bring all the souls that I can to the knowledgeof the truth, and to embrace the Catholic doctrine; but as I am here under your permission, and in your family, I am bound in justice to your kindness, as well as in decency and good manners, to be under your government; and therefore I shall not, without your leave, enter into any debates on the points of religion, in which we may not agree, farther than you shall give me leave.”
I told him his carriage was so modest that I could not but acknowledge it; that it was true, we were such people as they call heretics, but that he was not the first Catholic that I had conversed with without falling into any inconveniencies, or carrying the questions to any height in debate; that he should not find himself the worse used for being of a different opinion from us; and if we did not converse without any dislike on either side, upon that score, it would be his fault, not ours.
He replied, that he thought our conversation might be easily separated from disputes; that it was not his business to cap principles with every man he discoursed with; and that he rather desired me to converse with him as agentlemanthan as areligieux; that if I would give him leave at any time to discourse upon religious subjects, he would readily comply with it; and that then he did not doubt but I would allow him also to defend his own opinions as well as he could; but that without my leave he would not break in upon me with any such thing.
He told me farther, that he would not cease to do all that became him in his office as a priest, as well as a private Christian, to procure the good of the ship, and the safety of all that was in her; and though perhaps we would not join with him, and he could not pray with us, he hoped he might pray for us, which he would do upon all occasions. In this manner we conversed; and as he was of a most obliging gentleman-like behaviour, so he was, if I may be allowed to say so, a man of good sense, and, as I believe, of great learning.