g great misery among us English, and every one of us straggling
where he could to get food, every day one or more who went out never
came back, and that caused a suspicion that the negroes had betrayed
them to the Spaniards, or, maybe, slain and eaten them. So these fellows
being upbraided, with that altogether left us, telling us boldly,
that if they had eaten our fellows, we owed them a debt instead of the
Spanish prisoners; and we, in great terror and hunger, went forward and
over the mountains till we came to a little river which ran northward,
which seemed to lead into the Northern Sea; and there Mr. O.--who, sirs,
I will say, after his first rage was over, behaved himself all through
like a valiant and skilful commander--bade us cut down trees and make
canoes, to go down to the sea; which we began to do, with great labor
and little profit, hewing down trees with our swords, and burning them
out with fire, which, after much labor, we kindled; but as we were
a-burning out of the first tree, and cutting down of another, a great
party of negroes came upon us, and with much friendly show bade us flee
for our lives, for the Spaniards were upon us in great force. And so we
were up and away again, hardly able to drag our legs after us for hunger
and weariness, and the broiling heat. And some were taken (God help
them!) and some fled with the negroes, of whom what became God alone
knoweth; but eight or ten held on with the captain, among whom was I,
and fled downward toward the sea for one day; but afterwards finding, by
the noise in the woods, that the Spaniards were on the track of us, we
turned up again toward the inland, and coming to a cliff, climbed up
over it, drawing up the lady and the little maid with cords of liana
(which hang from those trees as honeysuckle does here, but exceeding
stout and long, even to fifty fathoms); and so breaking the track, hoped
to be out of the way of the enemy.

"By which, nevertheless, we only increased our misery. For two fell from
that cliff, as men asleep for very weariness, and miserably broke their
bones; and others, whether by the great toil, or sunstrokes, or eating
of strange berries, fell sick of fluxes and fevers; where was no drop
of water, but rock of pumice stone as bare as the back of my hand, and
full, moreover, of great cracks, black and without bottom, over which
we had not strength to lift the sick, but were fain to leave them there
aloft, in the sunshine, like Dives