recover succour of the ships; the Spaniards, being before provided for the purpose, landed in all places in multitudes from their ships, which they could easily do without boats, and slew all our men ashore without mercy, a few of them escaping aboard the _Jesus_. The great ship which had, by the estimation, three hundred men placed in her secretly, immediately fell aboard the _Minion_, which, by God's appointment, in the time of the suspicion we had, which was only one half-hour, the _Minion_ was made ready to avoid, and so, loosing her headfasts, and hailing away by the sternfasts, she was gotten out; thus, with God's help, she defended the violence of the first brunt of these three hundred men. The _Minion_ being passed out, they came aboard the _Jesus_, which also, with very much ado and the loss of many of our men, were defended and kept out. Then were there also two other ships that assaulted the _Jesus_ at the same instant, so that she had hard work getting loose; but yet, with some time, we had cut our headfasts, and gotten out by the sternfasts. Now, when the _Jesus_ and the _Minion_ were gotten two ship-lengths from the Spanish fleet, the fight began hot on all sides, so that within one hour the admiral of the Spaniards was supposed to be sunk, their vice-admiral burned, and one other of their principal ships supposed to be sunk, so that the ships were little to annoy us. "Then is it to be understood that all the ordnance upon the island was in the Spaniards' hands, which did us so great annoyance that it cut all the masts and yards of the _Jesus_ in such sort, that there was no hope to carry her away; also it sank our small ships, whereupon we determined to place the _Jesus_ on that side of the _Minion_, that she might abide all the battery from the land, and so be a defence for the _Minion_ till night, and then to take such relief of victual and other necessaries from the _Jesus_ as the time would suffer us, and to leave her. As we were thus determining, and had placed the _Minion_ from the shot of the land, suddenly the Spaniards had fired two great ships which were coming directly to us, and having no means to avoid the fire, it bred among our men a marvellous fear, so that some said, 'Let us depart with the _Minion_;' others said, 'Let us see whether the wind will carry the fire from us.' But to be short, the _Minion's_ men, which had always their sails in readiness, thought to make sure work, and so without either consent of the captain or master, cut their sail, so that very hardly I was received into the _Minion_.