Then Were There Also
Two Other Ships That Assaulted The Jesus At The Same Instant, So That
She Had Hard Work Getting Loose; But Yet, With Some Time, We Had Cut
Our Headfasts, And Gotten Out By The Sternfasts.
Now, when the Jesus
and the Minion were gotten two ship-lengths from the Spanish fleet, the
fight began
Hot on all sides, so that within one hour the admiral of
the Spaniards was supposed to be sunk, their vice-admiral burned, and
one other of their principal ships supposed to be sunk, so that the
ships were little to annoy us.
Then is it to be understood that all the ordnance upon the island was
in the Spaniards' hands, which did us so great annoyance that it cut
all the masts and yards of the Jesus in such sort, that there was no
hope to carry her away; also it sank our small ships, whereupon we
determined to place the Jesus on that side of the Minion, that she
might abide all the battery from the land, and so be a defence for the
Minion till night, and then to take such relief of victual and other
necessaries from the Jesus as the time would suffer us, and to leave
her. As we were thus determining, and had placed the Minion from the
shot of the land, suddenly the Spaniards had fired two great ships
which were coming directly to us, and having no means to avoid the
fire, it bred among our men a marvellous fear, so that some said, "Let
us depart with the Minion," others said, "Let us see whether the wind
will carry the fire from us." But to be short, the Minion's men, which
had always their sails in a readiness, thought to make sure work, and
so without either consent of the captain or master, cut their sail, so
that very hardly I was received into the Minion.
The most part of the men that were left alive in the Jesus made shift
and followed the Minion in a small boat, the rest, which the little
boat was not able to receive, were enforced to abide the mercy of the
Spaniards (which I doubt was very little); so with the Minion only, and
the Judith (a small barque of fifty tons) we escaped, which barque the
same night forsook us in our great misery. We were now removed with
the Minion from the Spanish ships two bow-shots, and there rode all
that night. The next morning we recovered an island a mile from the
Spaniards, where there took us a north wind, and being left only with
two anchors and two cables (for in this conflict we lost three cables
and two anchors), we thought always upon death, which ever was present,
but God preserved us to a longer time.
The weather waxed reasonable, and the Saturday we set sail, and having
a great number of men and little victual, our hope of life waxed less
and less.
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