. To this request Sharp at last consented, and a retreat
was begun, under cover of a fighting rear-guard, "and I hope," says
Sharp, "it will not be esteemed a Vanity in me to say, that I was mighty
Helpful to facilitate this Retreat." In the midst of a fearful racket
of musketry, he fought the pirates through the soldiers to the church
where the wounded lay. There was no time, nor was there any conveyance,
for the wounded, and they were left lying there, all desperately hurt.
The two surgeons could have been saved "but that they had been drinking
while we assaulted the fort, and thus would not come with us when they
were called." There was no time for a second call, for the Spaniards
were closing in on them, and the firing was as fierce as ever. The men
were so faint with hunger and thirst, the heat of battle, and the long
day's marching, that Sharp feared he would never get them to the boats.
A fierce rush of Spaniards beat them away from the hospital, and drove
them out of the town "into the Savannas or open fields." The Spaniards
gave a cheer and charged in to end the battle, but the pirates were a
dogged lot, and not yet at the end of their strength. They got into a
clump or cluster, with a few wounded men in the centre, to load the
muskets, "resolving to die one by another" rather than to run. They
stood firm, cursing and damning the Spaniards, telling them to come on,
and calling them a lot of cowards. There were not fifty buccaneers fit
to carry a musket, but the forty odd, unhurt men stood steadily, and
poured in such withering volleys of shot, with such terrible precision,
that the Spanish charge went to pieces. As the charge broke, the pirates
plied them again, and made a "bloody massacre" of them, so that they ran
to shelter like so many frightened rabbits. The forty-seven had beaten
off twenty or thirty times their number, and had won themselves a
passage home.

There was no question of trying to retake the town. The men were in such
misery that the march back to the boats taxed their strength to the
breaking point. They set off over the savannah, in as good order as they
could, with a wounded man, or two, in every rank of them. As they set
forward, a company of horsemen rode out, and got upon their flanks "and
fired at us all the way, though they would not come within reach of our
guns; for their own reached farther than ours, and out-shot us more than
one third." There was great danger of these horsemen cut