be your servants too.  Aye, by God, and so you shall replied the impudent rascal.  Upon which, starting up, Will Atkins cries, Come Jack, let’s have t’other brush with them; who dare to build in our dominions?—­Thus leaving us something heated with just passion, away they trooped, every man having a gun, pistol, and sword, muttering some threatening words, that we could then but imperfectly understand.  That night they designed to murder their two companions, and slept till midnight in the bower, thinking to fall upon them in their sleep:  not were the honest men less thoughtful concerning them; for at this juncture they were coming to find them out, but in a much fairer way.  As soon as the villains came to the huts, and found nobody there, they concluded that I and my Spaniard had given them notice, and therefore swore to be revenged on us.  Then they demolished the poor men’s habitations; not by fire, as they attempted before, but pulled down their houses, limb from limb, not leaving stick nor stone on the ground where they stood, broke their household stuff in pieces, tore up their trees, spoiled their inclosures, and, in short, quite ruined them of every thing they had.  Had these people met together, no doubt but there would have been a bloody battle; but Providence ordered it for the better; for just as the three were got together the two were at our castle; and when they left us, the three came back again, but in great rage, scoffingly telling us what they had done; when one taking hold of a Spaniard’s hat, twirls it round, saying, And you Seignor Jack Spaniard, shall have the same sauce, if you don’t mind your manners.  My Spaniard, a grave but courageous man, knocked him down with one blow of his fist; at which another villain fired his pistol, and narrowly missed his body, but wounded him a little in the ear.  Hereat enraged, the Spaniard takes up the fellow’s musket who he had knocked down, and would have shot him, if I and the rest had not come out, and taken their arms from every one of them.

“These Englishmen perceiving they had made all of us their enemies, began to cool; but not withstanding their better words the Spaniards would not return them their arms again, telling them, ’they would do them no manner of harm, if they would live peaceably; but if they offered any injury to the plantation or castle, they would shoot them as they would do ravenous beasts.  This made them so mad, that they went away raging like furies of hell.  They were no sooner gone, but in came the two honest men, fired with the justest rage, if such can be, having been ruined as aforesaid.  And indeed it was very hard, that nineteen of us should be bullied by three villains, continually offending with impunity.