it, but for living creatures we could see none; for the people, if
they had any cattle, drove them all away, and showed us nothing but
themselves, and that sometimes in a threatening posture, and in number
so great, that made us suppose the island to be greater than we first
imagined. It is true, they would not come near enough for us to engage
with them, at least not openly; but they came near enough for us to see
them, and, by the help of our glasses, to see that they were clothed and
armed, but their clothes were only about their lower and middle parts;
that they had long lances, half pikes, in their hands, besides bows
and arrows; that they had great high things on their heads, made, as we
believed, of feathers, and which looked something like our grenadiers'
caps in England.
When we saw them so shy that they would not come near us, our men began
to range over the island, if it was such (for we never surrounded it),
to search for cattle, and for any of the Indian plantations, for fruits
or plants; but they soon found, to their cost, that they were to use
more caution than that came to, and that they were to discover perfectly
every bush and every tree before they ventured abroad in the country;
for about fourteen of our men going farther than the rest, into a part
of the country which seemed to be planted, as they thought, for it did
but seem so, only I think it was overgrown with canes, such as we make
our cane chairs with--I say, venturing too far, they were suddenly
attacked with a shower of arrows from almost every side of them, as they
thought, out of the tops of the trees.
They had nothing to do but to fly for it, which, however, they could not
resolve on, till five of them were wounded; nor had they escaped so, if
one of them had not been so much wiser or thoughtfuller than the rest,
as to consider, that though they could not see the enemy, so as to shoot
at them, yet perhaps the noise of their shot might terrify them, and
that they should rather fire at a venture. Accordingly, ten of them
faced about, and fired at random anywhere among the canes.
The noise and the fire not only terrified the enemy, but, as they
believed, their shot had luckily hit some of them; for they found not
only that the arrows, which came thick among them before, ceased, but
they heard the Indians halloo, after their way, to one another, and make
a strange noise, more uncouth and inimitably strange than any they had
ever heard, more like the howling and barking of wild creatures in the
woods than like the voice of men, only that sometimes they seemed to
speak words.
They observed also, that this noise of the Indians went farther and
farther off, so that they were satisfied the Indians fled away, except
on one side, where they heard a doleful groaning and howling, and where
it continued a good while, which they supposed was from some or other
of them being wounded, and howling by reason of their wounds; or
killed, and others howling over them: but our men had enough of making
discoveries; so they did not trouble themselves to look farther, but
resolved to take this opportunity to retreat. But the worst of
their adventure was to come; for as they came back, they passed by a
prodigious great trunk of an old tree; what tree it was, they said, they
did not know, but it stood like an old decayed oak in a park, where the
keepers in England take a stand, as they call it, to shoot a deer; and
it stood just under the steep side of a great rock, or hill, that our
people could not see what was beyond it.
As they came by this tree, they were of a sudden shot at, from the top
of the tree, with seven arrows and three lances, which, to our great
grief, killed two of our men, and wounded three more. This was the more
surprising, because, being without any defence, and so near the trees,
they expected more lances and arrows every moment; nor would flying do
them any service, the Indians being, as appeared, very good marksmen.
In this extremity, they had happily this presence of mind, viz., to run
close to the tree, and stand, as it were, under it; so that those above
could not come at, or see them, to throw their lances at them. This
succeeded, and gave them time to consider what to do; they knew their
enemies and murderers were above; they heard them talk, and those above
knew those were below; but they below were obliged to keep close for
fear of their lances from above. At length, one of our men, looking a
little more strictly than the rest, thought he saw the head of one of
the Indians just over a dead limb of the tree, which, it seems, the
creature sat upon. One man immediately fired, and levelled his piece so
true that the shot went through the fellow's head; and down he fell out
of the tree immediately, and came upon the ground with such force, with
the height of his fall, that if he had not been killed with the shot,
he would certainly have been killed with dashing his body against the
ground.
This so frightened them, that, besides the howling noise they made in
the tree, our men heard a strange clutter of them in the body of the
tree, from whence they concluded they had made the tree hollow, and were
got to hide themselves there. Now, had this been the case, they were
secure enough from our men, for it was impossible any of our men could
get up the tree on the outside, there being no branches to climb by;
and, to shoot at the tree, that they tried several times to no purpose,
for the tree was so thick that no shot would enter it. They made no
doubt, however, but that they had their enemies in a trap, and that a
small siege would either bring them down, tree and all, or starve them
out; so they resolved to keep their post, and send to us for
help. Accordingly, two of them came away to us for more hands, and
particularly desired that some of our carpenters might come with tools,
to help to cut down the tree, or at least to cut down other wood and set
fire to it; and that, they concluded, would not fail to bring them out.
Accordingly, our men went like a little army, and with mighty
preparations for an enterprise, the like of which has scarce been ever
heard, to form the siege of a great tree. However, when they came there,
they found the task difficult enough, for the old trunk was indeed a
very great one, and very tall, being at least two-and-twenty feet high,
with seven old limbs standing out every way from the top, but decayed,
and very few leaves, if any, left on it.
William the Quaker, whose curiosity led him to go among the rest,
proposed that they should make a ladder, and get upon the top, and then
throw wild-fire into the tree, and smoke them out. Others proposed going
back, and getting a great gun out of the ship, which would split the
tree in pieces with the iron bullets; others, that they should cut down
a great deal of wood, and pile it up round the tree, and set it on fire,
and burn the tree, and the Indians in it.
These consultations took up our people no less than two or three days,
in all which time they heard nothing of the supposed garrison within
this wooden castle, nor any noise within. William's project was first
gone about, and a large strong ladder was made, to scale this wooden
tower; and in two or three hours' time it would have been ready to
mount, when, on a sudden, they heard the noise of the Indians in the
body of the tree again, and a little after, several of them appeared at
the top of the tree, and threw some lances down at our men; one of which
struck one of our seamen a-top of the shoulder, and gave him such
a desperate wound, that the surgeons not only had a great deal of
difficulty to cure him, but the poor man endured such horrible torture,
that we all said they had better have killed him outright. However, he
was cured at last, though he never recovered the perfect use of his arm,
the lance having cut some of the tendons on the top of the arm, near the
shoulder, which, as I supposed, performed the office of motion to the
limb before; so that the poor man was a cripple all the days of his
life. But to return to the desperate rogues in the tree; our men shot at
them, but did not find they had hit them, or any of them; but as soon as
ever they shot at them, they could hear them huddle down into the trunk
of the tree again, and there, to be sure, they were safe.
Well, however, it was this which put by the project of William's ladder;
for when it was done, who would venture up among such a troop of bold
creatures as were there, and who, they supposed, were desperate by their
circumstances? And as but one man at a time could go up, they began to
think it would not do; and, indeed, I was of the opinion (for about this
time I was come to their assistance) that going up the ladder would not
do, unless it was thus, that a man should, as it were, run just up to
the top, and throw some fireworks into the tree, and come down again;
and this we did two or three times, but found no effect of it. At
last, one of our gunners made a stink-pot, as we called it, being a
composition which only smokes, but does not flame or burn; but withal
the smoke of it is so thick, and the smell of it so intolerably
nauseous, that it is not to be suffered. This he threw into the tree
himself, and we waited for the effect of it, but heard or saw nothing
all that night or the next day; so we concluded the men within were all
smothered; when, on a sudden, the next night we heard them upon the top
of the tree again shouting and hallooing like madmen.
We concluded, as anybody would, that this was to call for help, and we
resolved to continue our siege; for we were all enraged to see ourselves
so baulked by a few wild people, whom we thought we had safe in our
clutches; and, indeed, never were there so many concurring circumstances
to delude men in any case we had met with. We resolved, however, to try
another stink-pot the next night, and our engineer and gunner had got it
ready, when, hearing a noise of the enemy on the top of the tree, and
in the body of the tree, I was not willing to let the gunner go up the
ladder, which, I said, would be but to be certain of being murdered.
However, he found a medium for it, and that was to go up a few steps,
and, with a long pole in his hand, to throw it in upon the top of the
tree, the ladder being standing all this while against the top of the
tree; but when the gunner, with his machine at the top of his pole, came
to the tree, with three other men to help him, behold the ladder was
gone.
This perfectly confounded us; and we now concluded the Indians in the
tree had, by this piece of negligence, taken the opportunity, and come
all down the ladder, made their escape, and had carried away the ladder
with them. I laughed most heartily at my friend William, who, as I
said, had the direction of the siege, and had set up a ladder for the
garrison, as we called them, to get down upon, and run away. But when
daylight came, we were all set to rights again; for there stood our
ladder, hauled up on the top of the tree, with about half of it in the
hollow of the tree, and the other half upright in the air. Then we began
to laugh at the Indians for fools, that they could not as well have
found their way down by the ladder, and have made their escape, as to
have pulled it up by main strength into the tree.
We then resolved upon fire, and so to put an end to the work at once,
and burn the tree and its inhabitants together; and accordingly we
went to work to cut wood, and in a few hours' time we got enough, as we
thought, together; and, piling it up round the bottom of the tree,
we set it on fire, waiting at a distance to see when, the gentlemen's
quarters being too hot for them, they would come flying out at the top.
But we were quite confounded when, on a sudden, we found the fire all
put out by a great quantity of water thrown upon it. We then thought the
devil must be in them, to be sure. Says William, "This is certainly the
cunningest piece of Indian engineering that ever was heard of; and there
can be but one thing more to guess at, besides witchcraft and dealing
with the devil, which I believe not one word of," says he; "and that
must be, that this is an artificial tree, or a natural tree artificially
made hollow down into the earth, through root and all; and that these
creatures have an artificial cavity underneath it, quite into the hill,
or a way to go through, and under the hill, to some other place; and
where that other place is, we know not; but if it be not our own fault,
I'll find the place, and follow them into it, before I am two days
older." He then called the carpenters, to know of them if they had any
large saws that would cut through the body; and they told him they had
no saws that were long enough, nor could men work into such a monstrous
old stump in a great while; but that they would go to work with it with
their axes, and undertake to cut it down in two days, and stock up the
root of it in two more. But William was for another way, which proved
much better than all this; for he was for silent work, that, if
possible, he might catch some of the fellows in it. So he sets twelve
men to it with large augers, to bore great holes into the side of the
tree, to go almost through, but not quite through; which holes were
bored without noise, and when they were done he filled them all with
gunpowder, stopping strong plugs, bolted crossways, into the holes, and
then boring a slanting hole, of a less size, down into the greater hole,
all of which were filled with powder, and at once blown up. When they
took fire, they made such a noise, and tore and split up the tree in
so many places, and in such a manner, that we could see plainly such
another blast would demolish it; and so it did. Thus at the second time
we could, at two or three places, put our hands in them, and discovered
a cheat, namely, that there was a cave or hole dug into the earth, from
or through the bottom of the hollow, and that it had communication with
another cave farther in, where we heard the voices of several of the
wild folks, calling and talking to one another.
When we came thus far we had a great mind to get at them; and William
desired that three men might be given him with hand-grenadoes; and he
promised to go down first, and boldly he did so; for William, to give
him his due, had the heart of a lion.
They had pistols in their hands, and swords by their sides; but, as they
had taught the Indians before by their stink-pots, the Indians returned
them in their own kind; for they made such a smoke come up out of the
entrance into the cave or hollow, that William and his three men were
glad to come running out of the cave, and out of the tree too, for mere
want of breath; and indeed they were almost stifled.
Never was a fortification so well defended, or assailants so many ways
defeated. We were now for giving it over, and particularly I called
William, and told him I could not but laugh to see us spinning out our
time here for nothing; that I could not imagine what we were doing; that
it was certain that the rogues that were in it were cunning to the
last degree, and it would vex anybody to be so baulked by a few naked
ignorant fellows; but still it was not worth our while to push it any
further, nor was there anything that I knew of to be got by the conquest
when it was made, so that I thought it high time to give it over.
William acknowledged what I said was just, and that there was nothing
but our curiosity to be gratified in this attempt; and though, as he
said, he was very desirous to have searched into the thing, yet he would
not insist upon it; so we resolved to quit it and come away, which
we did. However, William said before we went he would have this
satisfaction of them, viz., to burn down the tree and stop up the
entrance into the cave. And while doing this the gunner told him he
would have one satisfaction of the rogues; and this was, that he would
make a mine of it, and see which way it had vent. Upon this he fetched
two barrels of powder out of the ships, and placed them in the inside of
the hollow of the cave, as far in as he durst go to carry them, and then
filling up the mouth of the cave where the tree stood, and ramming it
sufficiently hard, leaving only a pipe or touch-hole, he gave fire to
it, and stood at a distance to see which way it would operate, when on
a sudden he found the force of the powder burst its way out among some
bushes on the other side the little hill I mentioned, and that it came
roaring out there as out of the mouth of a cannon. Immediately running
thither, we saw the effects of the powder.
First, we saw that there was the other mouth of the cave, which the
powder had so torn and opened, that the loose earth was so fallen in
again that nothing of shape could be discerned; but there we saw what
was become of the garrison of the Indians, too, who had given us all
this trouble, for some of them had no arms, some no legs, some no head;
some lay half buried in the rubbish of the mine--that is to say, in the
loose earth that fell in; and, in short, there was a miserable havoc
made in them all; for we had good reason to believe not one of them that
were in the inside could escape, but rather were shot out of the mouth
of the cave, like a bullet out of a gun.
We had now our full satisfaction of the Indians; but, in short, this was
a losing voyage, for we had two men killed, one quite crippled, and five
more wounded; we spent two barrels of powder, and eleven days' time, and
all to get the understanding how to make an Indian mine, or how to keep
garrison in a hollow tree; and with this wit, bought at this dear
price, we came away, having taken in some fresh water, but got no fresh
provisions.
We then considered what we should do to get back again to Madagascar.
We were much about the latitude of the Cape of Good Hope, but had such a
very long run, and were neither sure of meeting with fair winds nor with
any land in the way, that we knew not what to think of it. William
was our last resort in this case again, and he was very plain with us.
"Friend," says he to Captain Wilmot, "what occasion hast thou to run the
venture of starving, merely for the pleasure of saying thou hast been
where nobody has been before? There are a great many places nearer
home, of which thou mayest say the same thing at less expense. I see no
occasion thou hast of keeping thus far south any longer than till you
are sure you are to the west end of Java and Sumatra; and then thou
mayest stand away north towards Ceylon, and the coast of Coromandel and
Madras, where thou mayest get both fresh water and fresh provisions; and
to that part it is likely we may hold out well enough with the stores we
have already."
This was wholesome advice, and such as was not to be slighted; so we
stood away to the west, keeping between the latitude of 31 and 35, and
had very good weather and fair winds for about ten days' sail; by which
time, by our reckoning, we were clear of the isles, and might run away
to the north; and if we did not fall in with Ceylon, we should at least
go into the great deep Bay of Bengal.
But we were out in our reckoning a great deal; for, when we had stood
due north for about fifteen or sixteen degrees, we met with land again
on our starboard bow, about three leagues' distance; so we came to an
anchor about half a league from it, and manned out our boats to see what
sort of a country it was. We found it a very good one; fresh water easy
to come at, but no cattle that we could see, or inhabitants; and we
were very shy of searching too far after them, lest we should make such
another journey as we did last; so that we let rambling alone, and chose
rather to take what we could find, which was only a few wild mangoes,
and some plants of several kinds, which we knew not the names of.
We made no stay here, but put to sea again, N.W. by N., but had little
wind for a fortnight more, when we made land again; and standing in with
the shore, we were surprised to find ourselves on the south shore of
Java; and just as we were coming to an anchor we saw a boat, carrying
Dutch colours, sailing along-shore. We were not solicitous to speak
with them, or any other of their nation, but left it indifferent to our
people, when they went on shore, to see the Dutchmen or not to see them;
our business was to get provisions, which, indeed, by this time were
very short with us.
We resolved to go on shore with our boats in the most convenient place
we could find, and to look out a proper harbour to bring the ship into,
leaving it to our fate whether we should meet with friends or enemies;
resolving, however, not to stay any considerable time, at least not
long enough to have expresses sent across the island to Batavia, and for
ships to come round from thence to attack us.
We found, according to our desire, a very good harbour, where we rode
in seven fathom water, well defended from the weather, whatever might
happen; and here we got fresh provisions, such as good hogs and some
cows; and that we might lay in a little store, we killed sixteen cows,
and pickled and barrelled up the flesh as well as we could be supposed
to do in the latitude of eight degrees from the line.
We did all this in about five days, and filled our casks with water; and
the last boat was coming off with herbs and roots, we being unmoored,
and our fore-topsail loose for sailing, when we spied a large ship to
the northward, bearing down directly upon us. We knew not what she might
be, but concluded the worst, and made all possible haste to get our
anchor up, and get under sail, that we might be in a readiness to see
what she had to say to us, for we were under no great concern for one
ship, but our notion was, that we should be attacked by three or four
together.
By the time we had got up our anchor and the boat was stowed, the ship
was within a league of us, and, as we thought, bore down to engage us;
so we spread our black flag, or ancient, on the poop, and the bloody
flag at the top-mast-head, and having made a clear ship, we stretched
away to the westward, to get the wind of him.
They had, it seems, quite mistaken us before, expecting nothing of an
enemy or a pirate in those seas; and, not doubting but we had been one
of their own ships, they seemed to be in some confusion when they found
their mistake, so they immediately hauled upon a wind on the other tack,
and stood edging in for the shore, towards the easternmost part of the
island. Upon this we tacked, and stood after him with all the sail we
could, and in two hours came almost within gunshot. Though they crowded
all the sail they could lay on, there was no remedy but to engage us,
and they soon saw their inequality of force. We fired a gun for them to
bring to; so they manned out their boat, and sent to us with a flag of
truce. We sent back the boat, but with this answer to the captain, that
he had nothing to do but to strike and bring his ship to an anchor
under our stern, and come on board us himself, when he should know our
demands; but that, however, since he had not yet put us to the trouble
of forcing him, which we saw we were able to do, we assured them that
the captain should return again in safety, and all his men, and that,
supplying us with such things as we should demand, his ship should not
be plundered. They went back with this message, and it was some time
after they were on board before they struck, which made us begin to
think they refused it; so we fired a shot, and in a few minutes more we
perceived their boat put off; and as soon as the boat put off the ship
struck and came to an anchor, as was directed.
When the captain came on board, we demanded an account of their cargo,
which was chiefly bales of goods from Bengal for Bantam. We told them
our present want was provisions, which they had no need of, being just
at the end of their voyage; and that, if they would send their boat on
shore with ours, and procure us six-and-twenty head of black cattle,
threescore hogs, a quantity of brandy and arrack, and three hundred
bushels of rice, we would let them go free.
As to the rice, they gave us six hundred bushels, which they had
actually on board, together with a parcel shipped upon freight. Also,
they gave us thirty middling casks of very good arrack, but beef and
pork they had none. However, they went on shore with our men, and bought
eleven bullocks and fifty hogs, which were pickled up for our occasion;
and upon the supplies of provision from shore, we dismissed them and
their ship.