He returned to Fort Diego, and ordered Colonel Palmer, with over two hundred Scotchmen and Indians to march to Fort Moosa and scout through the woods to prevent any communication between St. Augustine and the interior of Florida. Colonel Palmer was told to camp each night in a new place, to avoid battle, and to return at once if a larger force than his own appeared. Another officer was sent with the Carolina soldiers to take Point Quartell, which was about a mile distant from the castle of St. Augustine, and build a battery there to command the northern entrance to the harbor. The general himself set out to capture the Spaniards' battery at Anastasia, and by clever maneuvers there succeeded in driving the enemy to their boats. Oglethorpe set up cannon and sent an envoy to the Spanish governor, calling on him to surrender. The Spaniard replied that he should be glad to shake hands with General Oglethorpe if the latter would come to him in his castle. In answer Oglethorpe opened fire from his new battery, but the distance to the town was too great for his guns and little harm was done the enemy. Colonel Palmer, meantime, disregarding the general's orders to camp in a new place each night, had kept his men in the partly demolished Fort Moosa. The Spaniards sent six hundred men to attack his small force. Palmer's soldiers resisted desperately, but the Highlanders and the Indians were too much outnumbered by the Spaniards; half of them, including Colonel Palmer, were killed, a few escaped, and the rest were made prisoners. The commander of the fleet also disregarded the arrangement he had made with Oglethorpe and ordered off the war-ship stationed outside the harbor, with the result that several sloops from Havana with new troops and provisions stole into the channel and reached the Spanish stronghold. The garrison at St. Augustine had begun to feel the pinch of hunger and might soon have surrendered, but these fresh supplies tided them over and enabled them to keep up their defense. General Oglethorpe, discouraged in his plan of a blockade, decided to make one more attempt at carrying the town by assault. The British commodore, Pearse, was to attack with his fleet while Oglethorpe led his soldiers by land. The colonial troops and Indians were ready to open fire, and only waited the signal from the ships. They waited in vain, however. Instead of keeping his agreement, Commodore Pearse quietly sailed away with all his ships, sending word to General Oglethorpe that it was now the season when hurricanes might be expected off the Florida coast and that he didn't intend to risk His Majesty's fleet there any longer.