400 HONESTY VERSUS DISHONESTY.

The other had firearms with them too, but one of the two honest
men, bolder than his comrade, and made desperate by his danger,
told them if they offered to move hand or foot they were dead
men, and boldly commanded them to lay down their arms. They
did not indeed lay down their arms, but seeing him so resolute it
brought them to a parley, and they consented to take their wounded
man with them and be gone—and indeed it seems the fellow was
wounded sufficiently with the blow. However, they were much
in the wrong, since they had the advantage, that they did not dis-
arm them effectually, as they might have done, and have gone
immediately to the Spaniards and given them an account how
the rogues had treated them; for the three villains studied. nothing
but revenge, and every day gave them some intimation that they
did so.

But not to crowd this part with an account of the lesser part of
their rogueries, such as treading down their corn, shooting three
young kids and a she-goat, which the poor men had got to breed
up tame for their stores; and, in a word, plaguing them night and
day in this manner, it foreed the two men to such a desperation,
that they resolved to fight them all three the first time they had a
fair opportunity. In order to this, they resolved to go to the
eastle, as they called it, that was my old dwelling, where the three
rogues and the Spaniards all lived together, at that time intending
to have a fair battle, and the Spaniards should stand by to see fair
play. So they got up in the morning before day, and came to the
place, and called the Englishmen by their names, telling a
Spaniard that answered that they wanted to speak with them.

It happened that the day before, two of the Spaniards having
been in the woods, had seen one of the two Englishmen, whom, for
distinction, I call the honest men, and he had made a sad com-
plaint to the Spaniards of the barbarous usage they had met with
from their three countrymen, and how they had ruined their
plantation and destroyed their corn that they had laboured so hard
to bring forward, and killed the milch-goat and their three kids,
which was all they had provided for their sustenance; and that if
he and his friends, meaning the Spaniards, did not assist them
again, they should be starved. When the Spaniards came home