My very soul shrunk within me, and my blood ran chill in my veins, when I saw this; and, I believe, had the three English sailors that pursued them come on, I had made our men kill them all; however, we took some means to let the poor flying creatures know that we would not hurt them; and immediately they came up to us, and kneeling down, with their hands lifted up, made piteous lamentation to us to save them, which we let them know we would:  whereupon they crept all together in a huddle close behind us, as for protection.  I left my men drawn up together, and, charging them to hurt nobody, but, if possible, to get at some of our people, and see what devil it was possessed them, and what they intended to do, and to command them off; assuring them that if they stayed till daylight they would have a hundred thousand men about their ears:  I say I left them, and went among those flying people, taking only two of our men with me; and there was, indeed, a piteous spectacle among them.  Some of them had their feet terribly burned with trampling and running through the fire; others their hands burned; one of the women had fallen down in the fire, and was very much burned before she could get out again; and two or three of the men had cuts in their backs and thighs, from our men pursuing; and another was shot through the body and died while I was there.

I would fain have learned what the occasion of all this was; but I could not understand one word they said; though, by signs, I perceived some of them knew not what was the occasion themselves.  I was so terrified in my thoughts at this outrageous attempt that I could not stay there, but went back to my own men, and resolved to go into the middle of the town, through the fire, or whatever might be in the way, and put an end to it, cost what it would; accordingly, as I came back to my men, I told them my resolution, and commanded them to follow me, when, at the very moment, came four of our men, with the boatswain at their head, roving over heaps of bodies they had killed, all covered with blood and dust, as if they wanted more people to massacre, when our men hallooed to them as loud as they could halloo; and with much ado one of them made them hear, so that they knew who we were, and came up to us.

As soon as the boatswain saw us, he set up a halloo like a shout of triumph, for having, as he thought, more help come; and without waiting to hear me, “Captain,” says he, “noble captain!  I am glad you are come; we have not half done yet.  Villainous hell-hound dogs!  I’ll kill as many of them as poor Tom has hairs upon his head:  we have sworn to spare none of them; we’ll root out the very nation of them from the earth;” and thus he ran on, out of breath, too, with action, and would not give us leave to speak a word.  At last, raising my voice that I might silence him a little, “Barbarous dog!” said I, “what are you doing!  I won’t have one creature touched more, upon pain of death; I charge you, upon your life, to stop your hands, and stand still here, or you are a dead man this minute.”—­“Why, sir,” says he, “do you know what you do, or what they have done?  If you want a reason for what we have done, come hither;” and with that he showed me the poor fellow hanging, with his throat cut.