; and they again
as readily took the alarm, but it was impossible to persuade them to
stay close within where they were, but that they must all run out to see
how things stood.

While it was dark indeed, they were well enough, and they had
opportunity enough, for some hours, to view them by the light of three
fires they had made at some distance from one another; what they were
doing they knew not, and what to do themselves they knew not; for,
first, the enemy were too many; and, secondly, they did not keep
together, but were divided into several parties, and were on shore in
several places.

The Spaniards were in no small consternation at this sight; and as they
found that the fellows ran straggling all over the shore, they made no
doubt, but, first or last, some of them would chop in upon their
habitation, or upon some other place, where they would see the tokens of
inhabitants; and they were in great perplexity also for fear of their
flock of goats, which would have been little less than starving them, if
they should have been destroyed; so the first thing they resolved upon,
was to dispatch three men away before it was light, viz. two Spaniards
and one Englishman, to drive all the goats away to the great valley
where the cave was, and, if need were, to drive them into the very
cave itself.

Could they have seen the savages all together in one body, and at a
distance from their canoes, they resolved, if there had been an hundred
of them, to have attacked them; but that could not be obtained, for
there were some of them two miles off from the other, and, as it
appeared afterwards, were of two different nations.

After having mused a great while on the course they should take, and
beaten their brains in considering their present circumstances, they
resolved, at last while it was dark, to send the old savage (Friday's
father) out as a spy, to learn if possible something concerning them, as
what they came for, and what they intended to do, and the like. The old
man readily undertook it, and stripping himself quite naked, as most of
the savages were, away he went. After he had been gone an hour or two,
he brings word that he had been among them undiscovered, that he found
they were two parties, and of two several nations who had war with one
another, and had had a great battle in their own country, and that both
sides having had several prisoners taken in the fight, they were by mere
chance landed in the same island