urious charge than the
creatures made upon us in this place. They came on with a growling kind
of noise, and mounted the piece of timber, which, as I said, was our
breastwork, as if they were only rushing upon their prey; and this fury
of theirs, it seems, was principally occasioned by their seeing our
horses behind us. I ordered our men to fire as before, every other man;
and they took their aim so sure that they killed several of the wolves at
the first volley; but there was a necessity to keep a continual firing,
for they came on like devils, those behind pushing on those before.

When we had fired a second volley of our fusees, we thought they stopped
a little, and I hoped they would have gone off, but it was but a moment,
for others came forward again; so we fired two volleys of our pistols;
and I believe in these four firings we had killed seventeen or eighteen
of them, and lamed twice as many, yet they came on again. I was loth to
spend our shot too hastily; so I called my servant, not my man Friday,
for he was better employed, for, with the greatest dexterity imaginable,
he had charged my fusee and his own while we were engaged--but, as I
said, I called my other man, and giving him a horn of powder, I had him
lay a train all along the piece of timber, and let it be a large train.
He did so, and had but just time to get away, when the wolves came up to
it, and some got upon it, when I, snapping an unchanged pistol close to
the powder, set it on fire; those that were upon the timber were scorched
with it, and six or seven of them fell; or rather jumped in among us with
the force and fright of the fire; we despatched these in an instant, and
the rest were so frightened with the light, which the night--for it was
now very near dark--made more terrible that they drew back a little; upon
which I ordered our last pistols to be fired off in one volley, and after
that we gave a shout; upon this the wolves turned tail, and we sallied
immediately upon near twenty lame ones that we found struggling on the
ground, and fell to cutting them with our swords, which answered our
expectation, for the crying and howling they made was better understood
by their fellows; so that they all fled and left us.

We had, first and last, killed about threescore of them, and had it been
daylight we had killed many more. The field of battle being thus
cleared, we made forward again, for we had still near a league to go. We
heard the raven