In all the discoveries I had made of the savage landing on the island, it was my constant care to prevent them making the least discovery of there being any inhabitant upon the place; and when by any necessity they came to know it, they felt it so effectively, that they that got away, were scarce able to give any account of it, for we disappeared as soon as possible, nor did ever any that had seen me, escape to tell any one else, except it were the three savages in our last encounter, who jumped into the boat, of whom I mentioned that I was afraid they should go home, and bring more help.

Whether it was the consequence of the escape of those men, that so great a number came now together; or whether they came ignorantly, and by accident, on their usual bloody errand, the Spaniards could not, it seems, understand:  but whatever it was, it had been their business, either to have:  concealed themselves, and not have seen them at all; much less to have let the savages have seen, that there were any inhabitants in the place; but to have fallen upon them so effectually, as that not a man of them should have escaped, which could only have been by getting in between them and their boats:  but this presence of mind was wanting to them; which was the ruin of their tranquillity for a great while.

We need not doubt but that the governor, and the man with him, surprised with this sight, ran back immediately, and raised their fellows, giving them an account of the imminent danger they were all in; and they again as readily took the alarm, but it was impossible to persuade them to stay close within where they were, but that they must all run out to see how things stood.

While it was dark indeed, they were well enough, and they had opportunity enough, for some hours, to view them by the light of three fires they had made at some distance from one another; what they were doing they knew not, and what to do themselves they knew not; for, first, the enemy were too many; and, secondly, they did not keep together, but were divided into several parties, and were on shore in several places.

The Spaniards were in no small consternation at this sight; and as they found that the fellows ran straggling all over the shore, they made no doubt, but, first or last, some of them would chop in upon their habitation, or upon some other place, where they would see the tokens of inhabitants; and they were in great perplexity also for fear of their flock of goats, which would have been little less than starving them, if they should have been destroyed; so the first thing they resolved upon, was to dispatch three men away before it was light, viz. two Spaniards and one Englishman, to drive all the goats away to the great valley where the cave was, and, if need were, to drive them into the very cave itself.

Could they have seen the savages all together in one body, and at a distance from their canoes, they resolved, if there had been an hundred of them, to have attacked them; but that could not be obtained, for there were some of them two miles off from the other, and, as it appeared afterwards, were of two different nations.