strange fishes, and beside them, a sea-cow full seven feet
long, with limpets and barnacles on her back, as if she had been a stick
of drift-timber. This is a fond and foolish beast: and yet pious withal;
for finding a corpse, she watches over it day and night until it decay
or be buried. The Indians call her manati; who carries her young
under her arm, and gives it suck like a woman; and being wounded, she
lamenteth aloud with a human voice, and is said at certain seasons to
sing very melodiously; which melody, perhaps, having been heard in those
seas, is that which Mr. Frank reported to be the choirs of the Sirens
and Tritons. The which I do not avouch for truth, neither rashly deny,
having seen myself such fertility of Nature's wonders that I hold him
who denieth aught merely for its strangeness to be a ribald and an
ignoramus. Also one of our men brought in two great black fowls which
he had shot with a crossbow, bodied and headed like a capon, but bigger
than any eagle, which the Spaniards call curassos; which, with that
sea-cow, afterwards made us good cheer, both roast and sodden, for the
cow was very dainty meat, as good as a four-months' calf, and tender and
fat withal."

After that they set to work filling the casks and barricos, having laid
the boat up to the outflow of the rivulet. And lucky for them it was,
as it fell out, that they were all close together at that work, and not
abroad skylarking as they had been half-an-hour before.

Now John Brimblecombe had gone apart as soon as they landed, with a
shamefaced and doleful countenance; and sitting down under a great tree,
plucked a Bible from his bosom, and read steadfastly, girded with his
great sword, and his arquebuse lying by him. This too was well for him,
and for the rest; for they had not yet finished their watering, when
there was a cry that the enemy was on them; and out of the wood,
not twenty yards from the good parson, came full fifty shot, with a
multitude of negroes behind them, and an officer in front on horseback,
with a great plume of feathers in his hat, and his sword drawn in his
hand.

"Stand, for your lives!" shouted Amyas: and only just in time; for there
was ten good minutes lost in running up and down before he could get his
men into some order of battle. But when Jack beheld the Spaniards, as if
he had expected their coming, he plucked a leaf and put it into the
page of his book for a mark, laid the book down soberly, caught up hi