ways into the forecastle, but the Indians placed there on
purpose stabbed the greatest part of them as they attempted to pass by,
or forced them off the gangways into the waist. Others threw themselves
voluntarily over the barricades into the waist, and thought themselves
happy to lie concealed amongst the cattle; but the greatest part escaped
up the main-shrouds and sheltered themselves either in the tops or
rigging; and though the Indians attacked only the quarter-deck, yet the
watch in the forecastle, finding their communication cut off, and being
terrified by the wounds of the few who, not being killed on the spot, had
strength sufficient to force their passage along the gangways, and not
knowing either who their enemies were or what were their numbers, they
likewise gave all over for lost, and in great confusion ran up into the
rigging of the foremast and bowsprit.

Thus these eleven Indians, with a resolution perhaps without example,
possessed themselves almost in an instant of the quarter-deck of a ship
mounting sixty-six guns, with a crew of nearly five hundred men, and
continued in peaceable possession of this post a considerable time; for
the officers in the great cabin (amongst whom were Pizarro and
Mindinuetta), the crew between decks, and those who had escaped into the
tops and rigging, were only anxious for their own safety, and were for a
long time incapable of forming any project for suppressing the
insurrection and recovering the possession of the ship. It is true, the
yells of the Indians, the groans of the wounded and the confused clamours
of the crew, all heightened by the obscurity of the night, had at first
greatly magnified their danger, and had filled them with the imaginary
terrors which darkness, disorder, and an ignorance of the real strength
of an enemy never fail to produce. For as the Spaniards were sensible of
the disaffection of their pressed hands, and were also conscious of their
barbarity to their prisoners, they imagined the conspiracy was general,
and considered their own destruction as infallible; so that, it is said,
some of them had once taken the resolution of leaping into the sea, but
were prevented by their companions.

However, when the Indians had entirely cleared the quarter-deck, the
tumult in a great measure subsided; for those who had escaped were kept
silent by their fears, and the Indians were incapable of pursuing them to
renew the disorder. Orellana, when he saw himse