402 THE BIRDS ARE FLOWN.

fectly understand them as to know all the particulars; only that
in general they threatened them hard for taking the two English-
men’s part.

Whether they went, or how they bestowed their time that even-
ing, the Spaniards said, they did not know; but it seems they
wandered about the country part of the night, and then lying
down in the place which I used to call my bower, they were weary,
and overslept themselves. The case was this : they had resolved to
stay till midnight, and so to take the two poor men when they were
asleep; and, as they acknowledged afterwards, intended to set fire
to their huts while they were in them, and either burn them in
them, or murder them as they came out; and as malice seldom
sleeps very sound, it was very strange they should not have been
kept waking.

However, as the two men had also a design upon them, as I
have said, though a much fairer one than that of burning and
murdering, it happened, and very luckily for them all, that they
were up and gone abroad before the bloody-minded rogues came to
their huts.

When they came there and found the men gone, Atkins, who,
it seems, was the forwardest man, called out to his comrades,
“Ha, Jack! here’s the nest, but the birds are flown.” They
mused a while to think what should be the occasion of their
being abroad so soon, and suggested presently that the Spaniards
had given them notice of it; and with that they shook hands, and
swore to one another that they would be revenged of the Spaniards.
As soon as they had made this bloody bargain, they fell to work
with the poor men’s habitation. They did not set fire indeed to
anything, but they pulled down both their little houses, and pulled
them so limb from limb that they left not the least stick stand-
ing, or scarce any sign on the ground where they stood. They
tore all their little collected household stuff in pieces, and threw
everything about in such a manner, that the poor men afterwards
found some of their things a mile off of their habitation.

When they had done this, they pulled up all the young trees
the poor men had planted, pulled up an enclosure they had made
to secure their cattle and their corn, and in a word, sacked and