A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels — Volume 12 eBook

Robert Kerr (writer)
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 760 pages of information about A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels — Volume 12.

A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels — Volume 12 eBook

Robert Kerr (writer)
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 760 pages of information about A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels — Volume 12.
were on shore, and who immediately acquainted the master with what he had seen, and told him, that from the behaviour of the people he imagined an attack was intended:  That the master made light of the intelligence, and instead of repairing immediately to the boat, as he was urged to do, fired one of his pistols at a mark:  That the Indian who had till that time continued with them left them abruptly, and joined the body in the wood:  That the master, even after this, by an infatuation that is altogether unaccountable, continued to trifle away his time on shore, and did not attempt to recover the boat till the attack was begun.

As the expedition to find a better place for the ship had issued thus unhappily, I determined to try what could be done where we lay; the next day, therefore, the ship was brought down by the stern, as far as we could effect it, and the carpenter, the only one of the crew who was in tolerable health, caulked the bows, as far down as he could come at the bottom; and though he did not quite stop the leak, he very much reduced it.  In the afternoon a fresh gale set right into the bay, which made the ship ride with her stern very near the shore, and we observed a great number of the natives sculking among the trees upon the beach, who probably expected that the wind would have forced the ship on shore.

The next morning, the weather being fine, we veered the ship close in shore, with a spring upon our cable, so that we brought our broadside to bear upon the watering-place, for the protection of the boats that were to be employed there.  As there was reason to suppose that the natives whom we had seen among the trees the night before, were not now far distant, I fired a couple of shot into the wood, before I sent the waterers ashore; I also sent the lieutenant in the cutter, well manned and armed, with the boat that carried them, and ordered him and his people to keep on board, and lie close to the beach, to cover the watering-boat while she was loading, and to keep discharging muskets into the wood on each side of the party that were filling the water.  These orders were well executed, the beach was steep, so that the boats could lie close to the people that were at work, and the lieutenant from the cutter fired three or four vollies of small arms into the woods before any of the men went on shore, and none of the natives appearing, the waterers landed and went to work.  But notwithstanding all these precautions, before they had been on shore a quarter of an hour, a flight of arrows was discharged among them, one of which dangerously wounded a man that was filling water in the breast, and another stuck into a bareca on which Mr Pitcairn was sitting.  The people on board the cutter immediately fired several vollies of small arms into that part of the wood from which the arrows came, and I recalled the boats that I might more effectually drive the Indians from their ambuscades with grape-shot from the ship’s guns. 

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A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels — Volume 12 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.