arm; but it was impossible to persuade them to stay
close within where they were, but they must all run out to see how things
stood. While it was dark, indeed, they were safe, and they had
opportunity enough for some hours to view the savages by the light of
three fires they had made at a distance from one another; what they were
doing they knew not, neither did they know what to do themselves. For,
first, the enemy were too many; and secondly, they did not keep together,
but were divided into several parties, and were on shore in several
places.

The Spaniards were in no small consternation at this sight; and, as they
found that the fellows went straggling all over the shore, they made no
doubt but, first or last, some of them would chop in upon their
habitation, or upon some other place where they would see the token of
inhabitants; and they were in great perplexity also for fear of their
flock of goats, which, if they should be destroyed, would have been
little less than starving them. So the first thing they resolved upon
was to despatch three men away before it was light, two Spaniards and one
Englishman, to drive away all the goats to the great valley where the
cave was, and, if need were, to drive them into the very cave itself.
Could they have seen the savages all together in one body, and at a
distance from their canoes, they were resolved, if there had been a
hundred of them, to attack them; but that could not be done, for they
were some of them two miles off from the other, and, as it appeared
afterwards, were of two different nations.

After having mused a great while on the course they should take, they
resolved at last, while it was still dark, to send the old savage,
Friday's father, out as a spy, to learn, if possible, something
concerning them, as what they came for, what they intended to do, and the
like. The old man readily undertook it; and stripping himself quite
naked, as most of the savages were, away he went. After he had been gone
an hour or two, he brings word that he had been among them undiscovered,
that he found they were two parties, and of two several nations, who had
war with one another, and had a great battle in their own country; and
that both sides having had several prisoners taken in the fight, they
were, by mere chance, landed all on the same island, for the devouring
their prisoners and making merry; but their coming so by chance to the
same place had spoiled all their mirth