s, sick, and prisoners were therefore
left in an enclosed camp, barricaded by their baggage-vehicles and guarded
by eighty of their number. As a means of impressing the enemy with their
numbers and alertness they kept up camp-fires all night, repeated at
intervals the rolls upon the drum, relieved the sentinels with a great
noise, and varied these signs of activity with cries and occasional
discharges of musketry.

Meanwhile, as soon as the shades of evening descended, the remainder of
the freebooters, some two hundred in number, began their march, following
the route indicated by a scout they had sent to examine the forest. The
difficulties of that night journey through the dense wood proved very
great, there being numerous steep rocks to climb and descend, and this
needed to be done with as little noise as possible. Daybreak found the
adventurers on a mountain elevation, from which they could see the Spanish
intrenchments below them on the left. The greatest of their impediments
had been surmounted, but there were difficulties still to be overcome.

Fortunately for them a thick mist rose with the morning light, which,
while it rendered their downward passage critical, served to conceal them
from the enemy below. As they came near the works the heavy tread of a
patrol guided them in their course, and the morning prayers of the
Spaniards were of still more advantage in indicating their distance and
position. The freebooting band had reached the rear of the hostile army,
composed of five hundred men, who were so taken by surprise on seeing
their ferocious enemy rushing upon them with shouts and volleys, from this
unlooked-for quarter, that they fled without an attempt at defence.

The other Spaniards behaved more courageously, but the appearance of the
buccaneers within the works they had so toilsomely prepared robbed them of
spirit, and after an hour's fight they, too, broke and fled. The trees
they had felled to obstruct the road now contributed to their utter
defeat, and they were cut down in multitudes, with scarce an attempt at
resistance. We can scarcely credit the testimony of the freebooters,
however, that their sole losses were one killed and two wounded. The
success of the advance party was equalled by that of the guard of armed
men left in the camp, who, after some negotiations with the troop of
Spaniards in their rear, made a sudden charge upon them and dispersed all
who were not cut down.

That the freebo