‘The settlement is beset,’ said Nicky; ‘the Spaniards are on us in great force, and they must have been lurking in the lagoon for days; this explains the cowardly treachery of the rope,’ and he broke into loud invectives against our enemies, to all of which I most heartily said ‘Amen.’ For was not this attack most wanton? Here were we, living in a wilderness belonging to no man, killing those wild animals which God hath appointed to be human food, and so far surely performing a service to our fellows, when down come the Spaniards upon us out of pure arrogance and ill-blood, hanging and shooting our defenceless hunters, and, as we had no doubt, now attempting to destroy our huts and the property, for the accumulation of which we had honestly sweated and toiled. But such it has been ever since any flag but that of Spain floated in these seas. The mariners of many nations came naturally to enrich themselves with the produce of the new-discovered lands; but Spain arrogantly desired to squeeze in her greedy gripe the whole New World! Therefore, is it wonderful that we—the sailors of England, Scotland, France, Holland, and Portugal—should give the Spaniards fierce and eager battle? It was they who began the warfare; and such being the case, we paid them back in their own coin—usually, indeed, giving them the worst of the bargain. Such were the natural thoughts which passed through my head as we sat listening to the roar of battle, which we could hear but faintly, being more than a league distant from home. Presently, without speaking, we addressed ourselves steadily to our paddies, and it was not long before, to our great joy, we shot out of the dreary forest of mangroves, and found ourselves in the clear water of the lagoon. The boat which had given us chase was not anywhere to be seen; but we now heard the firing distinctly, for it was kept up very hot and constant. By this time the tide was running out like a mill stream, and the canoe was swept down with great rapidity before it. There was no wind, and the current had a glassy look; the air, too, was inexpressibly sultry. Great wreaths of dense vapour hung upon the hills, and the firmament was one louring sea of black clouds piled one above another, as though climbing up on each other’s vapoury shoulders from the horizon to the zenith. Presently the gloom increased to a foreboding blackness, which hung upon land and sea. The sounds of the birds and the insects were hushed, and in the intervals of the firing we heard only the low continuous rush of the turbid tide washing amid the mangroves. All at once a great flash of lightning tore, as it were, the black firmament into a blue gulf of flame, and at the same instant the thunder came, not rumbling or pealing, as I have heard it in Britain, but exploding with a splitting crash which seemed right above us, and which went through and through our ears. A quick succession of flashes and peals