ldier. This fray was occasioned by the latter's
having given the man a slight prick with his bayonet, in order to make
him keep without the line.

I now perceived that our situation required great circumspection and
management; and accordingly gave the strictest orders that no one
should fire, nor have recourse to any other act of violence, without
positive commands. As soon as I had given these directions, I was
called to the assistance of the watering party, where I found the
natives equally inclined to mischief. They had demanded from our
people a large hatchet for every cask of water, and this not being
complied with, they would not suffer the sailors to roll them down to
the boats.

I had no sooner joined them than one of the natives advanced up to me,
with great insolence, and made the same claim. I told him that, as a
friend, I was very willing to present him with a hatchet, but that I
should certainly carry off the water without paying any thing for
it; and I immediately ordered the pinnace men to proceed in their
business, and called three marines from the traders to protect them.

Though this shew of spirit succeeded so far as to make the natives
desist from any open attempt to interrupt us, they still continued to
behave in the most teazing and provoking manner. Whilst some of them,
under pretence of assisting the men in rolling down the casks, turned
them out of their course, and gave them a wrong direction; others were
stealing the hats from off the sailors' heads, pulling them backward
by their clothes, or tripping up their heels; the whole crowd,
all this time, shouting and laughing, with a strange mixture of
childishness and malice. They afterward found means to steal the
cooper's bucket, and took away his bag by force; but the objects
they were most eager to possess themselves of were the muskets of the
marines, who were every instant complaining of their attempts to force
them out of their hands. Though they continued, for the most part, to
pay great deference and respect to me, yet they did not suffer me to
escape without contributing my share to their stock of plunder. One
of them came up to me with a familiar air, and with great management
diverted my attention, whilst another, wrenching the hanger, which I
held carelessly in my hand, from me, ran off with it like lightning.

It was in vain to think of repelling this insolence by force; guarding
therefore against its effects, in the best manner