Bingham left Castlemore-Costello in the afternoon of Wednesday, halted at Bannada Abbey two hours after nightfall, and marched by moonlight to Aclare. With the morning light, he says, 'we forsook the highway, and took through the mountains with horsemen, footmen, and carriage, carrying all our own forces as in a "heyrse" together, keeping the bottoms and lowest passages as near as we might by circumferent ways, and with as great silence as was possible.' Reaching firm ground about nine o'clock, Bingham learned that the enemy were only two miles away, and pushed on at once with his cavalry, the advanced guard actually riding into their camp unchallenged. The Scots got into order as quickly as they could, Bingham skirmishing until his foot came up. He had the advantage of ground, and the Redshanks broke at the first charge. 'I was never,' said Captain Woodhouse, 'so weary with killing of men, for I protest to God, for as fast as I could I did but hough and paunch them.' In an hour all was over. About eighty swam naked over the Moy, and were mostly killed by the natives whom they had come to fight for; the rest became entangled in each other, and, to use Bingham's own expression, were carried out to sea in 'plumpes.' Both their leaders were slain. A thousand corpses lay on the field, and 500 more were found next day about the banks and shallows. 'The number of their fighting-men slain and drowned that day we estimated and numbered to be 1,400 or 1,500, besides boys, women, churls, and children, which could not be so few as as many more and upwards.' If it be true that Bingham only lost two or three men, and those chiefly through their own folly, the surprise must have been more complete than we should infer from the English accounts. 'They were,' says the Four Masters, 'first aroused from their profound slumbers by the shrieks of their military attendants, whom the Governor's people were slaughtering throughout the town. The Scots then arose expertly, and placed themselves, as well as they were able, in order and battle array.'[150] [Sidenote: Perrott insists on going to Connaught.] [Sidenote: Bad feeling between Perrott and Bingham.]