ame. If the noise of the guns was surprising to us before, the
cries of the poor people were now quite of another nature, and filled us
with horror. I must confess I was never at the sacking a city, or at the
taking a town by storm. I had heard of Oliver Cromwell taking Drogheda,
in Ireland, and killing man, woman, and child; and I had read of Count
Tilly sacking the city of Magdeburg and cutting the throats of twenty-two
thousand of all sexes; but I never had an idea of the thing itself
before, nor is it possible to describe it, or the horror that was upon
our minds at hearing it. However, we went on, and at length came to the
town, though there was no entering the streets of it for the fire. The
first object we met with was the ruins of a hut or house, or rather the
ashes of it, for the house was consumed; and just before it, plainly now
to be seen by the light of the fire, lay four men and three women,
killed, and, as we thought, one or two more lay in the heap among the
fire; in short, there were such instances of rage, altogether barbarous,
and of a fury something beyond what was human, that we thought it
impossible our men could be guilty of it; or, if they were the authors of
it, we thought they ought to be every one of them put to the worst of
deaths. But this was not all: we saw the fire increase forward, and the
cry went on just as the fire went on; so that we were in the utmost
confusion. We advanced a little way farther, and behold, to our
astonishment, three naked women, and crying in a most dreadful manner,
came flying as if they had wings, and after them sixteen or seventeen
men, natives, in the same terror and consternation, with three of our
English butchers in the rear, who, when they could not overtake them,
fired in among them, and one that was killed by their shot fell down in
our sight. When the rest saw us, believing us to be their enemies, and
that we would murder them as well as those that pursued them, they set up
a most dreadful shriek, especially the women; and two of them fell down,
as if already dead, with the fright.

My very soul shrunk within me, and my blood ran chill in my veins, when I
saw this; and, I believe, had the three English sailors that pursued them
come on, I had made our men kill them all; however, we took some means to
let the poor flying creatures know that we would not hurt them; and
immediately they came up to us, and kneeling down, with their hands
lifted up, ma