AND AN EASY VICTORY. 436

sound a thousand times bigger than it really was, the echoes
rattling from one side to another, and the fowls rising from all
parts screaming and making every sort a several kind of noise
according to their kind, just as it was when I fired the first gun
that perhaps was ever shot off in that place since it was an island,

Ifowever, all being silent again, and they not knowing what the
matter was, came on unconcerned till they came to the place where
their companions lay in a condition miserable enough. And here
the poor ignorant creatures, not sensible that they were within
reach of the same mischief, stood all of a huddie over the wounded
man talking, and, as may be supposed, inquiring of him how he
came to be hurt; and who, it is very rational to believe, told them
that a flash of fire first, and immediately after that thunder from
their gods, had killed two and wounded him. This, I say, is
rational; for nothing is more certain than that, as they saw no
man near them, so they had never heard a gun in all their lives,
or so much as heard of a gun; neither knew they anything of kill-
ing or wounding at a distance with fire and bullets: if they had,
one might reasonably believe they would not have stood so uncon-
cerned in viewing the fate of their fellows without some apprehen-
sion of their own.

Our two men, though, as they confessed to me, it grieved them
to be obliged to kill so many poor creatures, who at the same time
had no notion of their danger, yet, having them all thus in their
power, and the first having loaded his piece again, resolved to let
tly both together among them; and singling out by agreement
which to aim at, they shot together, and killed or very much
wounded four of them; the fifth, frighted even to death, though
not hurt, fell with the rest, so that our men, seeing them all fall
together, thought they had killed them all,

The belief that the savages were all killed made our two men
come boldly out from the tree before they had charged their guns
again, which was a wrong step; and they were under some sur-
prise when they came to the place and found no less than four of
the men alive, and of them two very little hurt, and one not at
all. This obliged them to fall upon them with the stocks of their
muskets; and first they made sure of the runaway savage that had