339 THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES

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 sights 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 despatch three men away before it was light,
namely, 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: emfinto the very cave itself.
? Could they have seen the savages all together in one body, and at a
ance from their canoes, they reatil wel: if there had been a hundred

-@f 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 ap-
peared afterwards, were of two different nations.

After having mused a great while on the course they should take,
and beaten their brains in considering their present circumstances,
they resolved at last, while it was dark, to send the old savage (Fri-
day’s father) out as a spy, to learn, if possible, something concerning
them, as what they came for, and what they intended to do, and the
like. The old man readily undertook it, and stripping himself quite
naked, as most of the savages were, away he went. After he had
been gone an hour or two, he brings word that he had been among
them undiscovered, that he found they were two parties, and of two
several nations, who had war with one another, and had had a great
battle in their own country, and that both sides having had several
prisoners taken in the fight, they were by mere chance landed on the
same island for the devouring their prisoners, and making merry; but
their coming ao by chance to the same place had spoiled all their mirth.
that they were in a great rage at one another, and were so near, that
he believed they would fight again as soon as daylight began to appear ;
but he did not perceive that they had any notion of anybody's being