All the first night we spent in mixing
up some combustible matter, with aqua vitae, gunpowder, and such other
materials as we could get; and having a good quantity of tar in a little
pot, about an hour after night we set out upon our expedition.

We came to the place about eleven o'clock at night, and found that the
people had not the least suspicion of danger attending their idol. The
night was cloudy: yet the moon gave us light enough to see that the idol
stood just in the same posture and place that it did before. The people
seemed to be all at their rest; only that in the great hut, where we saw
the three priests, we saw a light, and going up close to the door, we
heard people talking as if there were five or six of them; we concluded,
therefore, that if we set wildfire to the idol, those men would come out
immediately, and run up to the place to rescue it from destruction; and
what to do with them we knew not. Once we thought of carrying it away,
and setting fire to it at a distance; but when we came to handle it, we
found it too bulky for our carriage, so we were at a loss again. The
second Scotsman was for setting fire to the hut, and knocking the
creatures that were there on the head when they came out; but I could not
join with that; I was against killing them, if it were possible to avoid
it. "Well, then," said the Scots merchant, "I will tell you what we will
do: we will try to make them prisoners, tie their hands, and make them
stand and see their idol destroyed."

As it happened, we had twine or packthread enough about us, which we used
to tie our firelocks together with; so we resolved to attack these people
first, and with as little noise as we could. The first thing we did, we
knocked at the door, when one of the priests coming to it, we immediately
seized upon him, stopped his mouth, and tied his hands behind him, and
led him to the idol, where we gagged him that he might not make a noise,
tied his feet also together, and left him on the ground.

Two of us then waited at the door, expecting that another would come out
to see what the matter was; but we waited so long till the third man came
back to us; and then nobody coming out, we knocked again gently, and
immediately out came two more, and we served them just in the same
manner, but were obliged to go all with them, and lay them down by the
idol some distance from one another; when, going back, we found two more
were come out of the door, and