t their design was; but being willing to
be sure, we took this opportunity to get some of us into the ship, and
others to hand down arms and ammunition to those that were at work, to
defend themselves with if there should be occasion. And it was no more
than need: for in less than a quarter of an hour's consultation, they
agreed, it seems, that the ship was really a wreck, and that we were all
at work endeavouring to save her, or to save our lives by the help of our
boats; and when we handed our arms into the boat, they concluded, by that
act, that we were endeavouring to save some of our goods. Upon this,
they took it for granted we all belonged to them, and away they came
directly upon our men, as if it had been in a line-of-battle.

Our men, seeing so many of them, began to be frightened, for we lay but
in an ill posture to fight, and cried out to us to know what they should
do. I immediately called to the men that worked upon the stages to slip
them down, and get up the side into the ship, and bade those in the boat
to row round and come on board. The few who were on board worked with
all the strength and hands we had to bring the ship to rights; however,
neither the men upon the stages nor those in the boats could do as they
were ordered before the Cochin Chinese were upon them, when two of their
boats boarded our longboat, and began to lay hold of the men as their
prisoners.

The first man they laid hold of was an English seaman, a stout, strong
fellow, who having a musket in his hand, never offered to fire it, but
laid it down in the boat, like a fool, as I thought; but he understood
his business better than I could teach him, for he grappled the Pagan,
and dragged him by main force out of their boat into ours, where, taking
him by the ears, he beat his head so against the boat's gunnel that the
fellow died in his hands. In the meantime, a Dutchman, who stood next,
took up the musket, and with the butt-end of it so laid about him, that
he knocked down five of them who attempted to enter the boat. But this
was doing little towards resisting thirty or forty men, who, fearless
because ignorant of their danger, began to throw themselves into the
longboat, where we had but five men in all to defend it; but the
following accident, which deserved our laughter, gave our men a complete
victory.

Our carpenter being prepared to grave the outside of the ship, as well as
to pay the seams where he had caulked her to s