General Walpole was put in command, and he began entirely different tactics. He taught his men to take cover as the Maroons did, so that there are accounts of actions in which a great deal of powder was expended and no man was killed on either side, and he began to clear the country round the mountains, but as for trying to keep the Maroons penned in he knew better. “It would have been just as feasible as to pen pigeons in a meadow.” He employed working negroes under cover of strong advanced parties to clear the heights that surrounded his camp, the approaches to the Maroon defile, and an eminence near to his headquarters, which almost looked into a cockpit. And always he kept the soldiers on the move, harrying the Maroons successfully on the whole, but once a sergeant and ten men took a wrong turning, a thing easy enough to do in the mountains, and got into the Maroon defile, and presently the men who were waiting for that sergeant to bring them some more ammunition heard heavy firing, and not one man returned to tell the tale. And the soldiers kept clearing the country, and the Maroons kept breaking out in unexpected places, and raiding “like wild creatures of the forest, they found issues at every point.” Still General Walpole had high hopes. The dry season would come with the winter months, and where he knew there was a spring he could get at, he mounted a howitzer and threw shells into the cockpit just beyond it. And some of the springs go dry in the dry season, and it was not likely the Maroons were thrifty and conserved water. Though the rains in the mountains are plenteous in their season, I have myself seen the people come miles from that cockpit country with kerosene tins upon their heads to get water from the nearest spring which happened to be upon the Hyde. They did object to General Walpole. “Dam dat little buckra,” said the Maroons, “he cunning more dan dem toder. Dis here da new fashion for fight. Him fire him big ball a'ter we an' wen de big ball top de dam sunting fire we agen. Come boys, make we go take farer an' see wha he do den?” And they did go farther and were driven out again. But the soldiers had to be fed, and one day the Maroons surprised a convoy of provisions, captured the ten soldiers guarding it, and cut off their heads, and always they raided the negro provision grounds whether the slave owners liked it or not, and kept themselves well supplied. The soldiers were doing better, but the Maroons were still a thorn in their side, and the war threatened to be long and prolonged, which was bad for the prestige of the white people if nothing else. For nearly five months this body of untrained negroes had defied the military force of the island.