SEEKING A PLACE OF AMBUSH 228

thirty of them together, with their darts or their bows and
arrows, with which they could shoot as true to a mark as I could
with my gun ?

Sometimes I contrived to dig a hole under the place where they
made their fire, and put in five or six pound of gunpowder, which
when they kindled their fire would consequently take fire, and
blew up all that was near it. But as, in the first place, I should
be very loath to waste so much powder upon them, my store being
now within the quantity of one barrel, so neither could I be sure
of its going off at any certain time, when it might surprise them,
and at best that it would do little more than just blow the fire
about their ears and fright them, but not sufficient to make them
forsake the place: so I laid it aside, and then proposed that I
would place myself in ambush, in some convenient place, with my
three guns all double-loaded, and in the middle of their bloody
ceremony, let fly at them, when I should be sure to kill or wound
perhaps two or three at every shot; and then falling in upon them
with my three pistols and my sword, I made no doubt but that if
there were twenty I should kill them all. This fancy pleased my
thoughts for some weeks, and I was so full of it that I often
dreamed of it, and sometimes that I was just going to let fly at
them in my sleep.

I went so far with it in my imagination, that I employed my-
self several days to find out proper places to put myself in ambus-
cade, as I said, to watch for them; and I went frequently to the
place itself, which was now grown more familiar to me: and
especially while my mind was thus filled with thoughts of revenge,
and of a bloody putting twenty or thirty of them to the sword, as
I may call it; the horror I had at the place, and at the signals of
the barbarous wretches devouring one another, abated my malice.

Well, at length I found a place in the side of the hill, where I
was satisfied I might securely wait till I saw any of their boats
coming, and might then, even before they would be ready to come
on shore, convey myself unseen into thickets of trees, in one of
which there was a hollow large enough to conceal me entirely, and
where I might sit and observe all their bloody doings, and take

my full aim at their heads, when they were so close together as
(ong? 1A