However, when the Indians had entirely cleared the quarter-deck, the tumult in a great measure subsided; for those who had escaped were kept silent by their fears, and the Indians were incapable of pursuing them to renew the disorder.  Orellana, when he saw himself master of the quarter-deck, broke open the arm chest, which, on a slight suspicion of mutiny, had been ordered there a few days before, as to a place of the greatest security.  Here, he took it for granted, he should find cutlasses sufficient for himself and his companions, in the use of which weapon they were all extremely skilful, and with these, it was imagined, they proposed to have forced the great cabin; but on opening the chest there appeared nothing but firearms, which to them were of no use.  There were indeed cutlasses in the chest, but they were hid by the firearms being laid over them.  This was a sensible disappointment to them, and by this time Pizarro and his companions in the great cabin were capable of conversing aloud, through the cabin windows and port-holes, with those in the gun-room and between decks; and from hence they learned that the English (whom they principally suspected) were all safe below, and had not intermeddled in this mutiny; and by other particulars they at last discovered that none were concerned in it but Orellana and his people.  On this Pizarro and the officers resolved to attack them on the quarter-deck, before any of the discontented on board should so far recover their first surprise as to reflect on the facility and certainty of seizing the ship by a junction with the Indians in the present emergency.  With this view Pizarro got together what arms were in the cabin, and distributed them to those who were with him; but there were no other firearms to be met with but pistols, and for these they had neither powder nor ball.  However, having now settled a correspondence with the gun room, they lowered down a bucket out of the cabin window, into which the gunner, out of one of the gun-room ports, put a quantity of pistol cartridges.  When they had thus procured ammunition, and had loaded their pistols, they set the cabin door partly open, and fired some shot amongst the Indians on the quarter-deck, at first without effect.  But at last Mindinuetta had the good fortune to shoot Orellana dead on the spot; on which his faithful companions, abandoning all thoughts of further resistance, instantly leaped into the sea, where they every man perished.  Thus was this insurrection quelled, and the possession of the quarter-deck regained, after it had been full two hours in the power of this great and daring chief and his gallant and unhappy countrymen.

Pizarro, having escaped this imminent peril, steered for Europe, and arrived safe on the coast of Galicia* in the beginning of the year 1746, after having been absent between four and five years.

(Note.  Galicia is the north-western province of Spain.)

CHAPTER 3.  FROM MADEIRA TO ST. CATHERINE’S—­UNHEALTHINESS OF THE SQUADRON.