In The Mean Time We Got
Three Guns Ready Which We Fired At Them, When They Were So Near That We
Could Have Shot An Arrow On Board.
Having a fine breeze of wind from the
shore, we hoisted our foresail and cut our cable, making sail to join
our admiral to leeward, while they followed firing sometimes at us and
sometimes at our admiral.
At length one shot from our admiral had the
effect to make them retire, when they made away from us like cowardly
traitors. During all this time, though they continually fired all their
guns at us, not a man or boy among us was hurt; but we know not what
were the effects of our shot among them.
Seeing the villany of these men, we set sail immediately for an island
named _Fuego_, or the Fire island, twelve leagues from St Jago, where we
came to anchor on the 11th February, opposite a white chapel at the west
end of the island, half a league from a small town, and about a league
from the western extremity of the island. In this island, there is a
remarkably high hill which burns continually, and the inhabitants told
us, that about three years before, the whole island had like to have
been destroyed by the prodigious quantity of fire which it discharged.
About a league west from the chapel we found a fine spring of fresh
water, whence we supplied our ships. They have no wheat in this island,
instead of which they grow millet, which makes good bread, and they
likewise cultivate peas like those of Guinea.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 522 of 842
Words from 142022 to 142292
of 230997
