The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton

they usednone of their bows and arrows, or of their lances; and we thought theirnumbers increased upon our hands, particularly we thought so by thenoise. So I called to our men to halt, and bid them pour in one wholevolley and then shout, as we did in our first fight, and so run in uponthem and knock them down with our muskets.

  But they were too wise for that too, for as soon as we had fired a wholevolley and shouted, they all ran away, men, women, and children, so fastthat in a few moments we could not see one creature of them except somethat were wounded and lame, who lay wallowing and screaming here andthere upon the ground as they happened to fall.

  Upon this we came up to the field of battle, where we found we hadkilled thirty-seven of them, among which were three women, and hadwounded about sixty-four, among which were two women; by wounded Imean such as were so maimed as not to be able to go away, and those ournegroes killed afterwards in a cowardly manner in cold blood, for whichwe were very angry, and threatened to make them go to them if they didso again.

  There was no great spoil to be got, for they were all stark naked asthey came into the world, men and women together, some of them havingfeathers stuck in their hair, and others a kind of bracelet about theirnecks, but nothing else; but our negroes got a booty here, which we werevery glad of, and this was the bows and arrows of the vanquished, ofwhich they found more than they knew what to do with, belonging to thekilled and wounded men; these we ordered them to pick up, and theywere very useful to us afterwards. After the fight, and our negroes hadgotten bows and arrows, we sent them out in parties to see what theycould get, and they got some provisions; but, which was better than allthe rest, they brought us four more young bulls, or buffaloes, thathad been brought up to labour and to carry burthens. They knew them, itseems, by the burthens they had carried having galled their backs, forthey have no saddles to cover them with in that country.

  Those creatures not only eased our negroes, but gave us an opportunityto carry more provisions; and our negroes loaded them very hard at thisplace with flesh and roots, such as we wanted very much afterwards.

  In this town we found a very little young leopard, about two spans high;it was exceeding tame, and purred like a cat when we stroked it with ourhands, being, as I suppose, bred up among the negroes like a house-dog.It was our black prince, it seems, who, making his tour among theabandoned houses or huts, found this creature there, and making much ofhim, and giving a bit or two of flesh to him, the creature followed himlike a dog; of which more hereafter.

  Among the negroes that were killed in this battle there was one who hada little thin bit or plate of gold, about as big as a sixpence, whichhung by a little bit of a twisted gut upon his forehead, by which wesupposed he was a man of some eminence among them; but that was not all,for this bit of gold put us upon searching very narrowly if there wasnot more of it to be had thereabouts, but we found none at all.

  From this part of the country we went on for about fifteen days, andthen found ourselves obliged to march up a high ridge of mountains,frightful to behold, and the first of the kind that we met with; andhaving no guide but our little pocket-compass, we had no advantage ofinformation as to which was the best or the worst way, but was obligedto choose by what we saw, and shift as well as we could. We met withseveral nations of wild and naked people in the plain country before wecame to those hills, and we found them much more tractable and friendlythan those devils we had been forced to fight with; and though we couldlearn little from these people, yet we understood by the signs they madethat there was a vast desert beyond these hills, and, as our negroescalled them, much lion, much spotted cat (so they called the leopard);and they signed to us also that we must carry water with us. At the lastof these nations we furnished ourselves with as much provisions as wecould possibly carry, not knowing what we had to suffer, or what lengthwe had to go; and, to make our way as familiar to us as possible, Iproposed that of the last inhabitants we could find we should make someprisoners and carry them with us for guides over the desert, and toassist us in carrying provision, and, perhaps, in getting it too. Theadvice was too necessary to be slighted; so finding, by our dumb signsto the inhabitants, that there were some people that dwelt at the footof the mountains on the other side before we came to the desert itself,we resolved to furnish ourselves with guides by fair means or foul.

  Here, by a moderate computation, we concluded ourselves 700 miles fromthe sea-coast where we began. Our black prince was this day set freefrom the sling his arm hung in, our surgeon having perfectly restoredit, and he showed it to his own countrymen quite well, which made themgreatly wonder. Also our two negroes began to recover, and their woundsto heal apace, for our surgeon was very skilful in managing their cure.

  Having with infinite labour mounted these hills, and coming to a viewof the country beyond them, it was indeed enough to astonish as stout aheart as ever was created. It was a vast howling wilderness--not a tree,a river, or a green thing to be seen; for, as far as the eye could look,nothing but a scalding sand, which, as the wind blew, drove about inclouds enough to overwhelm man and beast. Nor could we see any end ofit either before us, which was our way, or to the right hand or left;so that truly our men began to be discouraged, and talk of going backagain. Nor could we indeed think of venturing over such a horrid placeas that before us, in which we saw nothing but present death.

  I was as much affected at the sight as any of them; but, for all that,I could not bear the thoughts of going back again. I told them we hadmarched 700 miles of our way, and it would be worse than death tothink of going back again; and that, if they thought the desert was notpassable, I thought we should rather change our course, and travel southtill we came to the Cape of Good Hope, or north to the country that layalong the Nile, where, perhaps, we might find some way or other over tothe west sea; for sure all Africa was not a desert.

  Our gunner, who, as I said before, was our guide as to the situationof places, told us that he could not tell what to say to going for theCape, for it was a monstrous length, being from the place where we nowwere not less than 1500 miles; and, by his account, we were now come athird part of the way to the coast of Angola, where we should meet thewestern ocean, and find ways enough for our escape home. On the otherhand, he assured us, and showed us a map of it, that, if we wentnorthward, the western shore of Africa went out into the sea above1000 miles west, so that we should have so much and more land to travelafterwards; which land might, for aught we knew, be as wild, barren,and desert as this. And therefore, upon the whole, he proposed that weshould attempt this desert, and perhaps we should not find it so longas we feared; and however, he proposed that we should see how far ourprovisions would carry us, and, in particular, our water; and we shouldventure no further than half so far as our water would last; and if wefound no end of the desert, we might come safely back again.

  This advice was so reasonable that we all approved of it; andaccordingly we calculated that we were able to carry provisions forforty-two days, but that we could not carry water for above twenty days,though we were to suppose it to stink, too, before that time expired.So that we concluded that, if we did not come at some water in ten days'time, we would return; but if we found a supply of water, we could thentravel twenty-one days; and, if we saw no end of the wilderness in thattime, we would return also.

  With this regulation of our measures, we descended the mountains, and itwas the second day before we quite reached the plain; where, however,to make us amends, we found a fine little rivulet of very good water,abundance of deer, a sort of creature like a hare, but not so nimble,but whose flesh we found very agreeable. But we were deceived in ourintelligence, for we found no people; so we got no more prisoners toassist us in carrying our baggage.

  The infinite number of deer and other creatures which we saw here, wefound was occasioned by the neighbourhood of the waste or desert, fromwhence they retired hither for food and refreshment. We stored ourselveshere with flesh and roots of divers kinds, which our negroes understoodbetter than we, and whic
h served us for bread; and with as much water as(by the allowance of a quart a day to a man for our negroes, and threepints a day a man for ourselves, and three quarts a day each for ourbuffaloes) would serve us twenty days; and thus loaded for a longmiserable march, we set forwards, being all sound in health and verycheerful, but not alike strong for so great a fatigue; and, which wasour grievance, were without a guide.

  In the very first entrance of the waste we were exceedingly discouraged,for we found the sand so deep, and it scalded our feet so much withthe heat, that after we had, as I may call it, waded rather than walkedthrough it about seven or eight miles, we were all heartily tired andfaint; even the very negroes laid down and panted like creatures thathad been pushed beyond their strength.

  Here we found the difference of lodging greatly injurious to us; for, asbefore, we always made us huts to sleep under, which covered us from thenight air, which is particularly unwholesome in those hot countries. Butwe had here no shelter,