These consultations took up our people no less than two or three days,
in all which time they heard nothing of the supposed garrison within
this wooden castle, nor any noise within. William's project was first
gone about, and a large strong ladder was made, to scale this wooden
tower; and in two or three hours' time it would have been ready to
mount, when, on a sudden, they heard the noise of the Indians in the
body of the tree again, and a little after, several of them appeared at
the top of the tree, and threw some lances down at our men; one of which
struck one of our seamen a-top of the shoulder, and gave him such
a desperate wound, that the surgeons not only had a great deal of
difficulty to cure him, but the poor man endured such horrible torture,
that we all said they had better have killed him outright. However, he
was cured at last, though he never recovered the perfect use of his arm,
the lance having cut some of the tendons on the top of the arm, near the
shoulder, which, as I supposed, performed the office of motion to the
limb before; so that the poor man was a cripple all the days of his
life. But to return to the desperate rogues in the tree; our men shot at
them, but did not find they had hit them, or any of them; but as soon as
ever they shot at them, they could hear them huddle down into the trunk
of the tree again, and there, to be sure, they were safe.
Well, however, it was this which put by the project of William's ladder;
for when it was done, who would venture up among such a troop of bold
creatures as were there, and who, they supposed, were desperate by their
circumstances? And as but one man at a time could go up, they began to
think it would not do; and, indeed, I was of the opinion (for about this
time I was come to their assistance) that going up the ladder would not
do, unless it was thus, that a man should, as it were, run just up to
the top, and throw some fireworks into the tree, and come down again;
and this we did two or three times, but found no effect of it. At
last, one of our gunners made a stink-pot, as we called it, being a
composition which only smokes, but does not flame or burn; but withal
the smoke of it is so thick, and the smell of it so intolerably
nauseous, that it is not to be suffered. This he threw into the tree
himself, and we waited for the effect of it, but heard or saw nothing
all that night or the next day; so we concluded the men within were all
smothered; when, on a sudden, the next night we heard them upon the top
of the tree again shouting and hallooing like madmen.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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