But not all the Indians were so kind as these they first met; for on the American mainland they fell in with a tribe whom the devilries of Spain had turned to "ferocious bloodsuckers," and whom they only narrowly avoided. Hawkins, according to his instructions from the Queen's Council, kept away from the larger dependencies and islands, and tried to sell his cargo in out-of-the-way places which Philip's orders might not have reached. At Barbarotta he was refused permission to trade. But Hawkins sent in a message: "I have with me one of Queen Elizabeth's own ships. I need refreshment and without it I cannot depart; if you do not allow me to have my way, I shall have to displease you." Thereat he ran out a few of his guns to mark the form which his displeasure might assume: the Spaniards improved in politeness. At Curacoa they feasted on roast lamb to their heart's content: near Darien they again had to use threats of violence in order to get licence to trade; but the price offered by the Spaniards for the negroes so disgusted the equitable mind of John Hawkins that he wrote the Governor a letter saying that they dealt too rigorously with him, to go about to cut his throat in the price of his commodities ... but seeing they had sent him this to his supper, he would in the morning bring them as good a breakfast. When that breakfast was served--and served hot--it proved to be garnished with a handsome volley of ordnance, with ships' boats landing at full speed a hundred armed Englishmen: the Spaniards fled. "After that we made our traffic full quietly, and sold all our negroes." Hawkins then sailed for Hispaniola, but being misled by his pilot he found himself at Jamaica and then at Cuba, and so along the coast of Florida, meeting many Indians whenever they landed who were of so fierce a character that of five hundred Spaniards who had recently set foot in the country only a very few returned; and a certain friar who essayed to preach to them "was by them taken and his skin cruelly pulled over his ears and his flesh eaten." "These Indians as they fight will clasp a tree in their arms and yet shoot their arrows: this is their way of taking cover."