The only comfort they had was that things were a little disturbing to the enemy too, for hidden in the bush the attacking party found various trunks containing articles of linen and plate, the result of raids on the plantations, and many of the dragoons up here in the rain furnished themselves with chintz nightgowns. I like that last touch. Yet all the time the Maroons were so close in the jungle they could hear the orders given but did not attack, because they feared the white men were too far in to run away and were in such numbers they, the Maroons, could not escape if driven to bay. But having conceded so much to the valour of the white men, they did pretty much as they pleased, even passing the soldiers camped at Vaughansfield at eleven o'clock one night and burning the buildings on a pen only six miles away on the road to Montego Bay. There was consternation in Montego Bay and thankfulness, that at least headquarters was between the town and the dreaded enemy. The raid quickened up the preparations, they dragged guns up the steep and slippery defiles that converged upon the Old Town, found no Maroons there, though round in the mountains the horns were calling defiance, and they recovered the bodies of Colonel Sandford and eighteen of those who had fallen with him. Lord Balcarres grew tired of this unprofitable warfare and went back to Montego Bay, and, extraordinary as it seems now, they put a price on the heads of Palmer and Parkinson, the men who had been sent back to tell the other Maroons what had happened to the thirty-seven men who had come in, for they said these men had instigated the rebellion. But that these two always denied. They always maintained that when the Maroons heard what had happened to their messengers of peace, each man of his own accord set fire to his house, determined to die rather than come in. And so bitter were they, not unnaturally, that a captain of Accompong Maroons, who had gone by a secret path to persuade them to surrender, was promptly shot because they feared he knew too much about the approaches to their strongholds. The great mistake probably lay in bringing in soldiers who could know nothing of the difficulties of the country. There must have been many stalwart young men, in fact we know there were, who were expert hunters and woodsmen and fully competent to deal with such an enemy. The difficulty was the leader. Brave men were a drug in the market, a clever leader almost impossible to find. Counsels were always divided. A soldier fresh from Europe or from the parade ground clearly was not the right man, but it always ended in a soldier being chosen.