Discoveries in geography -- English; Voyages and travels
being before provided for the purpose, landed in all places in
multitudes from their ships, which they could easily do without boats,
and slew all our men ashore without mercy, a few of them escaping
aboard the Jesus. The great ship which had, by the estimation, three
hundred men placed in her secretly, immediately fell aboard the Minion,
which, by God's appointment, in the time of the suspicion we had, which
was only one half-hour, the Minion was made ready to avoid, and so,
loosing her headfasts, and hailing away by the sternfasts, she was
gotten out; thus, with God's help, she defended the violence of the
first brunt of these three hundred men. The Minion being passed out,
they came aboard the Jesus, which also, with very much ado and the loss
of many of our men, were defended and kept out. Then were there also
two other ships that assaulted the Jesus at the same instant, so that
she had hard work getting loose; but yet, with some time, we had cut
our headfasts, and gotten out by the sternfasts. Now, when the Jesus
and the Minion were gotten two ship-lengths from the Spanish fleet, the
fight began hot on all sides, so that within one hour the admiral of
the Spaniards was supposed to be sunk, their vice-admiral burned, and
one other of their principal ships supposed to be sunk, so that the
ships were little to annoy us.
Then is it to be understood that all the ordnance upon the island was
in the Spaniards' hands, which did us so great annoyance that it cut
all the masts and yards of the Jesus in such sort, that there was no
hope to carry her away; also it sank our small ships, whereupon we
determined to place the Jesus on that side of the Minion, that she
might abide all the battery from the land, and so be a defence for the
Minion till night, and then to take such relief of victual and other
necessaries from the Jesus as the time would suffer us, and to leave
her. As we were thus determining, and had placed the Minion from the
shot of the land, suddenly the Spaniards had fired two great ships
which were coming directly to us, and having no means to avoid the
fire, it bred among our men a marvellous fear, so that some said, "Let
us depart with the Minion," others said, "Let us see whether the wind
will carry the fire from us." But to be short, the Minion's men, which
had always their sails in a readiness, thought to make sure work, and
so without either consent of the captain or master, cut their sail, so
that very hardly I was received into the Minion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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