Westward Ho! Or, The Voyages and Adventures of Sir Amyas Leigh, Knight, of Burrough, in the County of Devon, in the Reign of Her Most Glorious Majesty Queen ElizabethKingsley, Charles
History
Westward Ho! Or, The Voyages and Adventures of Sir Amyas Leigh, Knight, of Burrough, in the County of Devon, in the Reign of Her Most Glorious Majesty Queen Elizabeth
Kingsley, Charles
Great Britain -- History -- Elizabeth, 1558-1603 -- Fiction
“But the men were full of curses against the negroes, for their
cowardice and treachery; yea, and against high Heaven itself, which had
put the most part of their ammunition into the Spaniards' hands; and
told me, and I believe truly, how they forced the enemy awaiting them in
a little copse of great trees, well fortified with barricades of boughs,
and having with them our two falcons, which they had taken out of the
pinnace. And how Mr. Oxenham divided both the English and the negroes
into two bands, that one might attack the enemy in front, and the
other in the rear, and so set upon them with great fury, and would have
utterly driven them out, but that the negroes, who had come on with much
howling, like very wild beasts, being suddenly scared with the shot and
noise of the ordnance, turned and fled, leaving the Englishmen alone; in
which evil strait Mr. O. fought like a very Guy of Warwick, and I verily
believe every man of them likewise; for there was none of them who had
not his shrewd scratch to show. And indeed, Mr. Oxenham's party had once
gotten within the barricades, but the Spaniards being sheltered by
the tree trunks (and especially by one mighty tree, which stood as I
remembered it, and remember it now, borne up two fathoms high upon its
own roots, as it were upon arches and pillars), shot at them with such
advantage, that they had several slain, and seven more taken alive, only
among the roots of that tree. So seeing that they could prevail nothing,
having little but their pikes and swords, they were fain to give back;
though Mr. Oxenham swore he would not stir a foot, and making at the
Spanish captain was borne down with pikes, and hardly pulled away by
some, who at last reminding him of his lady, persuaded him to come away
with the rest. Whereon the other party fled also; but what had become
of them they knew not, for they took another way. And so they miserably
drew off, having lost in men eleven killed and seven taken alive,
besides five of the rascal negroes who were killed before they had time
to run; and there was an end of the matter.*
* In the documents from which I have drawn this veracious
history, a note is appended to this point of Yeo's story,
which seems to me to smack sufficiently of the old
Elizabethan seaman, to be inserted at length.
“All so far, and most after, agreeth with Lopez Vaz his
tale, taken from his pocket by my Lord Cumberland's mariners
at the river Plate, in the year 1586. But note here his
vainglory and falsehood, or else fear of the Spaniard.
“First, lest it should be seen how great an advantage the
Spaniards had, he maketh no mention of the English calivers,
nor those two pieces of ordnance which were in the pinnace.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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