Those that came on shore kept close together, marching
towards the top of the little hill under which my habitation lay;
and we could see them plainly, though they could not perceive us.
We should have been very glad if they would have come nearer us, so
that we might have fired at them, or that they would have gone
farther off, that we might come abroad. But when they were come to
the brow of the hill where they could see a great way into the
valleys and woods, which lay towards the north-east part, and where
the island lay lowest, they shouted and hallooed till they were
weary; and not caring, it seems, to venture far from the shore, nor
far from one another, they sat down together under a tree to
consider it. Had they thought fit to have gone to sleep there, as
the other part of them had done, they had done the job for us; but
they were too full of apprehensions of danger to venture to go to
sleep, though they could not tell what the danger was they had to
fear.
The captain made a very just proposal to me upon this consultation
of theirs, viz. that perhaps they would all fire a volley again, to
endeavour to make their fellows hear, and that we should all sally
upon them just at the juncture when their pieces were all
discharged, and they would certainly yield, and we should have them
without bloodshed.
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