“But the men were full of curses against the negroes, for their cowardice and treachery; yea, and against high Heaven itself, which had put the most part of their ammunition into the Spaniards’ hands; and told me, and I believe truly, how they forced the enemy awaiting them in a little copse of great trees, well fortified with barricades of boughs, and having with them our two falcons, which they had taken out of the pinnace.  And how Mr. Oxenham divided both the English and the negroes into two bands, that one might attack the enemy in front, and the other in the rear, and so set upon them with great fury, and would have utterly driven them out, but that the negroes, who had come on with much howling, like very wild beasts, being suddenly scared with the shot and noise of the ordnance, turned and fled, leaving the Englishmen alone; in which evil strait Mr. O. fought like a very Guy of Warwick, and I verily believe every man of them likewise; for there was none of them who had not his shrewd scratch to show.  And indeed, Mr. Oxenham’s party had once gotten within the barricades, but the Spaniards being sheltered by the tree trunks (and especially by one mighty tree, which stood as I remembered it, and remember it now, borne up two fathoms high upon its own roots, as it were upon arches and pillars), shot at them with such advantage, that they had several slain, and seven more taken alive, only among the roots of that tree.  So seeing that they could prevail nothing, having little but their pikes and swords, they were fain to give back; though Mr. Oxenham swore he would not stir a foot, and making at the Spanish captain was borne down with pikes, and hardly pulled away by some, who at last reminding him of his lady, persuaded him to come away with the rest.  Whereon the other party fled also; but what had become of them they knew not, for they took another way.  And so they miserably drew off, having lost in men eleven killed and seven taken alive, besides five of the rascal negroes who were killed before they had time to run; and there was an end of the matter.*

* In the documents from which I have drawn this veracious history, a note is appended to this point of Yeo’s story, which seems to me to smack sufficiently of the old Elizabethan seaman, to be inserted at length.

“All so far, and most after, agreeth with Lopez Vaz his tale, taken from his pocket by my Lord Cumberland’s mariners at the river Plate, in the year 1586.  But note here his vainglory and falsehood, or else fear of the Spaniard.

     “First, lest it should be seen how great an advantage the
     Spaniards had, he maketh no mention of the English calivers,
     nor those two pieces of ordnance which were in the pinnace.