On the smallest of the islands some natives were seen, who made signs to the Dutch not to advance, and threw them some penguins from the cliffs. Seeing that the strangers continued to approach, they shot arrows at them, which the Dutch returned with bullets. The savages fled for refuge to a cavern where they had secreted their women and children. The Dutch pursued them, and used their fire-arms with unrelenting ferocity, receiving little or no damage from the feeble missiles of the natives. The latter continued to fight in defence of their women and children with undiminished courage, and not till the last man of them was killed did the Hollanders obtain an entrance. Within they found a number of wretched mothers who had formed barricades of their own bodies to protect their children. Of these they killed several and wounded more. Seven weeks after, as has been said, Sebald de Weert found the tribe exterminated and but one woman surviving. Six children were taken by Van Noort on board of the fleet. One of the boys afterwards learned to speak the Dutch language, and from him were obtained several slender items of information respecting the tribe to which he had belonged, but which were far from compensating for the flagrant act of cruelty which had led to the capture of his fellow-exiles and himself. [Illustration: AFFRAY BETWEEN THE DUTCH AND PATAGONIANS.] The men went ashore near Cape Froward, and some of them ate of an herb which drove them "raging mad." During an anchorage here, the carpenters built a boat thirty-seven feet long in the keel; the blacksmith set up his forge, while the wooders made charcoal from trees which they felled. A light wind springing up, the vice-admiral, without receiving orders, fired a gun and got under way, and, though the admiral remained stationary, continued sailing on and firing guns, as if he had been commander-in-chief. Such, said Van Noort, is the effect, upon a vice-admiral, of having a larger number of anchors than his superior. He caused him to be arrested and to be tried upon the charge of exciting mutiny by insubordinate conduct, and allowed him three weeks to prepare his defence. At this period the number of deaths in the fleet had amounted to ninety-seven persons. When the three weeks expired, the vessels were still in the Strait, and the council was assembled on board the admiral's vessel, to hear the defence of the prisoner, which proved insufficient for his acquittal, and he was condemned to be set on shore and abandoned in the Strait. This sentence was publicly read on board the different ships, and, on the 26th of January, 1600, Jacob Claesz was carried in a boat to the shore, with a small stock of bread and wine. He was thus left to shift for himself among the wild beasts and still more savage inhabitants. Van Noort ordered a prayer and exhortation to be read in the fleet during the execution of this terrible verdict.