s going off at any certain time,
when it might surprise them; and, at best, that it would do little more
than just blow the fire about their ears, and fright them, but not
sufficient to make them forsake the place; so I laid it aside, and then
proposed, that I would place myself in ambush in some convenient place,
with my three guns all double-loaded, and in the middle of their bloody
ceremony let fly at them, when I should be sure to kill or wound perhaps
two or three at every shoot; and then falling in upon them with my three
pistols, and my sword, I made no doubt but that, if there were twenty, I
should kill them all: this fancy pleased my thoughts for some weeks, and
I was so full of it that I often dreamed of it; and sometimes, that I
was just going to let fly at them in my sleep.

I went so far with it in my indignation, that I employed myself several
days to find out proper places to put myself in ambuscade, as I said, to
watch for them; and I went frequently to the place itself, which was now
grown more familiar to me; and especially while my mind was thus filled
with thoughts of revenge, and of a bloody putting twenty or thirty of
them to the sword, as I may call it; but the horror I had at the place,
and at the signals of the barbarous wretches devouring one another,
abated my malice.

Well, at length I found a place in the side of the hill, where I was
satisfied I might securely wait till I saw any of the boats coming, and
might then, even before they would be ready to come on shore, convey
myself unseen into thickets of trees, in one of which there was an
hollow large enough to conceal me entirely; and where I might sit, and
observe all their bloody doings, and take my full aim at their heads,
when they were so close together, as that it would be next to impossible
that I should miss my shoot, or that I could fail wounding three or four
of them at the first shoot.

In this place then I resolved to fix my design; and accordingly I
prepared two muskets and my ordinary fowling-piece. The two muskets I
loaded with a brace of slugs each, and four or five smaller bullets,
about the size of pistol-bullets, and the fowling-piece I loaded with
near an handful of swan-shot, of the largest size; I also loaded my
pistols with about four bullets each: and in this posture, well provided
with ammunition for a second and third charge, I prepared myself for my
expedition.

After I had thus laid the scheme for my design,