destroy their boats, so they
must destroy the men, or be all of them destroyed themselves. In a word,
he showed them the necessity of it so plainly that they all came into it;
so they went to work immediately with the boats, and getting some dry
wood together from a dead tree, they tried to set some of them on fire,
but they were so wet that they would not burn; however, the fire so
burned the upper part that it soon made them unfit for use at sea.

When the Indians saw what they were about, some of them came running out
of the woods, and coming as near as they could to our men, kneeled down
and cried, "Oa, Oa, Waramokoa," and some other words of their language,
which none of the others understood anything of; but as they made pitiful
gestures and strange noises, it was easy to understand they begged to
have their boats spared, and that they would be gone, and never come
there again. But our men were now satisfied that they had no way to
preserve themselves, or to save their colony, but effectually to prevent
any of these people from ever going home again; depending upon this, that
if even so much as one of them got back into their country to tell the
story, the colony was undone; so that, letting them know that they should
not have any mercy, they fell to work with their canoes, and destroyed
every one that the storm had not destroyed before; at the sight of which,
the savages raised a hideous cry in the woods, which our people heard
plain enough, after which they ran about the island like distracted men,
so that, in a word, our men did not really know what at first to do with
them. Nor did the Spaniards, with all their prudence, consider that
while they made those people thus desperate, they ought to have kept a
good guard at the same time upon their plantations; for though it is true
they had driven away their cattle, and the Indians did not find out their
main retreat, I mean my old castle at the hill, nor the cave in the
valley, yet they found out my plantation at the bower, and pulled it all
to pieces, and all the fences and planting about it; trod all the corn
under foot, tore up the vines and grapes, being just then almost ripe,
and did our men inestimable damage, though to themselves not one
farthing's worth of service.

Though our men were able to fight them upon all occasions, yet they were
in no condition to pursue them, or hunt them up and down; for as they
were too nimble of foot for our people when th