446 THE CANOES DESTROYED.

themselves. In a word, he showed them the necessity of it so
plainly, that they all came into it. So they went to work im-
mediately with the boats, and getting some dry wood together
from a dead tree, they tried to set some of them on fire, but they
were so wet that they would not burn; however, the fire so burned
the upper part, that it soon made them unfit for swimming in the
sea as boats. When the Indians saw what they were about, some
of them came running out of the woods, and coming as near as
they could to our men, kneeled down and cried, “Oa, oa,
waramoka!” and some other words of their language, which none
of the others understood anything of; but as they made pitiful
gestures and strange noises, it was easy to understand they begged
to have their boats spared, and that they would be gone, and
never come there again.

But our men were now satisfied that they had no way to preserve
themselves or to save their colony but effectually to prevent any of
these people from ever going home again, depending upon this,
that if ever so much as one of them got back into their country to
tell the story, the colony was undone; so that, letting them know
that they should not have any mercy, they fell to work with their
canoes, and destroyed them, every one that the storm had not
destroyed before; at the sight of which the savages raised a hideous
cry in the woods, which our people heard plain enough, after
which they ran about the island like distracted men, so that, in a
word, our men did not really know at first what to do with them.

Nor did the Spaniards, with all their prudence, consider that
while they made this people thus desperate, they ought to have
kept good guard at the same time upon their plantations; for
though, it is true, they had driven away their cattle, and the
Indians did not find out their main retreat, I mean my old castle
at the hill, nor the cave in the valley, yet they found out my
plantation at the bower, and pulled it all to pieces, and all the
fences and planting about it, trod all the corn under foot, tore up
the vines and grapes, being just then almost ripe, and did to our
men an inestimable damage, though to themselves not one farthing-
worth of service.

‘Though our men were able to fight them upon all occasions, yet