ermined to try what could be done where we lay; the next
day, therefore, the ship was brought down by the stern, as far as we
could effect it, and the carpenter, the only one of the crew who was in
tolerable health, caulked the bows, as far down as he could come at the
bottom; and though he did not quite stop the leak, he very much reduced
it. In the afternoon a fresh gale set right into the bay, which made the
ship ride with her stern very near the shore, and we observed a great
number of the natives sculking among the trees upon the beach, who
probably expected that the wind would have forced the ship on shore.

The next morning, the weather being fine, we veered the ship close in
shore, with a spring upon our cable, so that we brought our broadside to
bear upon the watering-place, for the protection of the boats that were
to be employed there. As there was reason to suppose that the natives
whom we had seen among the trees the night before, were not now far
distant, I fired a couple of shot into the wood, before I sent the
waterers ashore; I also sent the lieutenant in the cutter, well manned
and armed, with the boat that carried them, and ordered him and his
people to keep on board, and lie close to the beach, to cover the
watering-boat while she was loading, and to keep discharging muskets
into the wood on each side of the party that were filling the water.
These orders were well executed, the beach was steep, so that the boats
could lie close to the people that were at work, and the lieutenant from
the cutter fired three or four vollies of small arms into the woods
before any of the men went on shore, and none of the natives appearing,
the waterers landed and went to work. But notwithstanding all these
precautions, before they had been on shore a quarter of an hour, a
flight of arrows was discharged among them, one of which dangerously
wounded a man that was filling water in the breast, and another stuck
into a bareca on which Mr Pitcairn was sitting. The people on board the
cutter immediately fired several vollies of small arms into that part of
the wood from which the arrows came, and I recalled the boats that I
might more effectually drive the Indians from their ambuscades with
grape-shot from the ship's guns. When the boats and people were on
board, we began to fire, and soon after saw about two hundred men rush
out of the woods, and run along the beach with the utmost precipitation.
We judged the coast to be n