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, 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 {37} of the quarter-deck of a ship mounting sixty-six guns, and mann'd with near five hundred hands, and continued in peaceable possession of this post a considerable time. For the officers in the great cabbin (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 prest 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.