310 DEATH OF FRIDAY,

However [ called to them not to fire by any means; but we handed
down some deal boards into the boat, and the carpenters presently
set up a kind of fence, like waste boards, to cover them from the
arrows of the savages, if they should shoot again.

About half an hour afterwards they came all wp in a body astern
of us, and pretty near us, so near that we could easily discern what
they were, though we could not tell their design. And I easily
found they were some of my old friends, the same sort of savages
that [ had been used to engage with; and in a little time more
they rowed a little further out to sea, until they came directly
broadside with us, and then rowed down straight upon us, until they
came so near that they could hear us speak. Upon this I ordered
all my men to keep close, lest they should shoot any more arrows,
and made all our guns ready: but being so near as to be within
hearing, [ made Friday go out upon the deck, and call out aloud
to them in his language to know what they meant; which accord-
ingly he did. Whether they understood him or not, that T know
not; but as soon as he had called to them, six of them, who were
in the foremost or nighest boat to us, turned their canoes
from us, and seemed to intimate to us by their extraordinary
actions that they were not afraid of anything we might do.
Whether this was a defiance or challenge we know not, or whether
it was done in mere contempt, or as a signal to the rest; but inn-
mediately Friday cried out they were going to shoot, and unhappily
for him, poor fellow, they let fly about three hundred of their
arrows, and, to my inexpressible grief, killed poor Friday, no other
man being in their sight.

The poor fellow was shot with no less than three arrows, and about
three more fell very near him; such unlucky marksmen they were.

U was so enraged with the loss of my old servant, the companion
of all my sorrows and solitudes, that I immediately ordered five
guns to be loaded with small shot, and four with great, and gave
them such a broadside as they had never heard in their lives before,
to be sure.

They were not above half a cable length off when we fired, and
our gunners took their aim so well that three or four of their canoes
were overset, as we had reason to believe, by one shot only.