but
the tallow-chandler, though himself a Spaniard, concealed him under a
quantity of dry hides while the enemy were scouring the place in
search of stragglers, and so saved his life. In consequence of this
surprise, still heavier duty was afterwards put upon us, the picket
having to be augmented to prevent further annoyance.

Two or three days after this had occurred the tallow-chandler was sent
for to join the Spanish army, no doubt because their general suspected
him of favouring the English; but he would not go until he had
obtained our colonel's advice, which was that he should go by all
means, and if he could conveniently come back with full particulars of
the enemy's strength he should be rewarded. As far as I can remember,
he had been away about ten days, when he again made his appearance
with the requisite information. What reward he got I cannot say, but
as the result of his tidings, about two or three days afterwards we
were called under arms at midnight and supplied with half a pound of
beef for each man; the order then being given to return to our
lodgings for two hours, and at the end of that time to fall in again.
Meanwhile a number of sailors came from on board our ships to take
charge of the town during our absence, we being now bound for some
place as yet unknown to us.

A little after two in the morning we left the town with an Indian for
our guide. We asked in the best manner that we could where we were
going to, but all we could understand from him was that we were on the
way to fight some Spaniards, which of course we had pretty well
guessed before, and that we should have some four or five thousand of
them to encounter. This last bit of news made us think that we were
going to have hard nuts to crack, but we found them a very cowardly
sort of folk to deal with, for after marching some five or six miles,
we despatched skirmishing parties, who fell in with their picket and
took a few prisoners, and soon made the others retreat without doing
anything further than to send up some rockets to alarm the body of the
enemy.

We marched on still further till we came nearly up to them, when we
found a river in our way; fortunately it was not very deep, so we
waded through it under a fire from the Spanish cannon, which killed
two of our men while in the act of crossing; and as soon as we were
over we formed line and advanced towards the enemy, who lay on some
fine rising ground in our front. They had som