ough to generous minds,
for a truly great man though obliged by the law of battle to destroy his
enemy, takes no delight in his misery. However, there was no need to
give any orders in this case; for their own savages, who were their
servants, despatched these poor creatures with their hatchets.

At length they came in view of the place where the more miserable remains
of the savages' army lay, where there appeared about a hundred still;
their posture was generally sitting upon the ground, with their knees up
towards their mouth, and the head put between the two hands, leaning down
upon the knees. When our men came within two musket-shots of them, the
Spaniard governor ordered two muskets to be fired without ball, to alarm
them; this he did, that by their countenance he might know what to
expect, whether they were still in heart to fight, or were so heartily
beaten as to be discouraged, and so he might manage accordingly. This
stratagem took: for as soon as the savages heard the first gun, and saw
the flash of the second, they started up upon their feet in the greatest
consternation imaginable; and as our men advanced swiftly towards them,
they all ran screaming and yelling away, with a kind of howling noise,
which our men did not understand, and had never heard before; and thus
they ran up the hills into the country.

At first our men had much rather the weather had been calm, and they had
all gone away to sea: but they did not then consider that this might
probably have been the occasion of their coming again in such multitudes
as not to be resisted, or, at least, to come so many and so often as
would quite desolate the island, and starve them. Will Atkins,
therefore, who notwithstanding his wound kept always with them, proved
the best counsellor in this case: his advice was, to take the advantage
that offered, and step in between them and their boats, and so deprive
them of the capacity of ever returning any more to plague the island.
They consulted long about this; and some were against it for fear of
making the wretches fly to the woods and live there desperate, and so
they should have them to hunt like wild beasts, be afraid to stir out
about their business, and have their plantations continually rifled, all
their tame goats destroyed, and, in short, be reduced to a life of
continual distress.

Will Atkins told them they had better have to do with a hundred men than
with a hundred nations; that, as they must