We resolved immediately upon the latter, depending upon it that the fire
and terror of our shot would soon put them to flight; so we drew up all
in a line, and marched boldly up to them. They stood ready to meet us,
depending, I suppose, to destroy us all with their lances; but before
we came near enough for them to throw their lances, we halted, and,
standing at a good distance from one another, to stretch our line as far
as we could, we gave them a salute with our shot, which, besides what we
wounded that we knew not of, knocked sixteen of them down upon the spot,
and three more were so lamed, that they fell about twenty or thirty
yards from them.
As soon as we had fired, they set up the horridest yell, or howling,
partly raised by those that were wounded, and partly by those that
pitied and condoled the bodies they saw lie dead, that I never heard
anything like it before or since.
We stood stock still after we had fired, to load our guns again, and
finding they did not stir from the place we fired among them again; we
killed about nine of them at the second fire; but as they did not stand
so thick as before, all our men did not fire, seven of us being ordered
to reserve our charge, and to advance as soon as the other had fired,
while the rest loaded again; of which I shall speak again presently.
As soon as we had fired the second volley, we shouted as loud as we
could, and the seven men advanced upon them, and, coming about twenty
yards nearer, fired again, and those that were behind having loaded
again with all expedition, followed; but when they saw us advance, they
ran screaming away as if they were bewitched.
When we came up to the field of battle, we saw a great number of bodies
lying upon the ground, many more than we could suppose were killed or
wounded; nay, more than we had bullets in our pieces when we fired; and
we could not tell what to make of it; but at length we found how it
was, viz., that they were frighted out of all manner of sense; nay, I do
believe several of those that were really dead, were frighted to death,
and had no wound about them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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