any of our men couldget 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 nodoubt, however, but that they had their enemies in a trap, and that asmall siege would either bring them down, tree and all, or starve themout; so they resolved to keep their post, and send to us forhelp. Accordingly, two of them came away to us for more hands, andparticularly 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 setfire to it; and that, they concluded, would not fail to bring them out.
Accordingly, our men went like a little army, and with mightypreparations for an enterprise, the like of which has scarce been everheard, 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 avery 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 thenthrow wild-fire into the tree, and smoke them out. Others proposed goingback, and getting a great gun out of the ship, which would split thetree in pieces with the iron bullets; others, that they should cut downa 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 withinthis wooden castle, nor any noise within. William's project was firstgone about, and a large strong ladder was made, to scale this woodentower; and in two or three hours' time it would have been ready tomount, when, on a sudden, they heard the noise of the Indians in thebody of the tree again, and a little after, several of them appeared atthe top of the tree, and threw some lances down at our men; one of whichstruck one of our seamen a-top of the shoulder, and gave him sucha desperate wound, that the surgeons not only had a great deal ofdifficulty to cure him, but the poor man endured such horrible torture,that we all said they had better have killed him outright. However, hewas 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 theshoulder, which, as I supposed, performed the office of motion to thelimb before; so that the poor man was a cripple all the days of hislife. But to return to the desperate rogues in the tree; our men shot atthem, but did not find they had hit them, or any of them; but as soon asever they shot at them, they could hear them huddle down into the trunkof 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 boldcreatures as were there, and who, they supposed, were desperate by theircircumstances? And as but one man at a time could go up, they began tothink it would not do; and, indeed, I was of the opinion (for about thistime I was come to their assistance) that going up the ladder would notdo, unless it was thus, that a man should, as it were, run just up tothe 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. Atlast, one of our gunners made a stink-pot, as we called it, being acomposition which only smokes, but does not flame or burn; but withalthe smoke of it is so thick, and the smell of it so intolerablynauseous, that it is not to be suffered. This he threw into the treehimself, and we waited for the effect of it, but heard or saw nothingall that night or the next day; so we concluded the men within were allsmothered; when, on a sudden, the next night we heard them upon the topof the tree again shouting and hallooing like madmen.
We concluded, as anybody would, that this was to call for help, and weresolved to continue our siege; for we were all enraged to see ourselvesso baulked by a few wild people, whom we thought we had safe in ourclutches; and, indeed, never were there so many concurring circumstancesto delude men in any case we had met with. We resolved, however, to tryanother stink-pot the next night, and our engineer and gunner had got itready, when, hearing a noise of the enemy on the top of the tree, andin the body of the tree, I was not willing to let the gunner go up theladder, 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 thetree, the ladder being standing all this while against the top of thetree; but when the gunner, with his machine at the top of his pole, cameto the tree, with three other men to help him, behold the ladder wasgone.
This perfectly confounded us; and we now concluded the Indians in thetree had, by this piece of negligence, taken the opportunity, and comeall down the ladder, made their escape, and had carried away the ladderwith them. I laughed most heartily at my friend William, who, as Isaid, had the direction of the siege, and had set up a ladder for thegarrison, as we called them, to get down upon, and run away. But whendaylight came, we were all set to rights again; for there stood ourladder, hauled up on the top of the tree, with about half of it in thehollow of the tree, and the other half upright in the air. Then we beganto laugh at the Indians for fools, that they could not as well havefound their way down by the ladder, and have made their escape, as tohave 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 wewent to work to cut wood, and in a few hours' time we got enough, as wethought, 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'squarters 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 allput out by a great quantity of water thrown upon it. We then thought thedevil must be in them, to be sure. Says William, "This is certainly thecunningest piece of Indian engineering that ever was heard of; and therecan be but one thing more to guess at, besides witchcraft and dealingwith the devil, which I believe not one word of," says he; "and thatmust be, that this is an artificial tree, or a natural tree artificiallymade hollow down into the earth, through root and all; and that thesecreatures have an artificial cavity underneath it, quite into the hill,or a way to go through, and under the hill, to some other place; andwhere 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 daysolder." He then called the carpenters, to know of them if they had anylarge saws that would cut through the body; and they told him they hadno saws that were long enough, nor could men work into such a monstrousold stump in a great while; but that they would go to work with it withtheir axes, and undertake to cut it down in two days, and stock up theroot of it in two more. But William was for another way, which provedmuch better than all this; for he was for silent work, that, ifpossible, he might catch some of the fellows in it. So he sets twelvemen to it with large augers, to bore great holes into the side of thetree, to go almost through, but not quite through; which holes werebored without noise, and when they were done he filled them all withgunpowder, stopping strong plugs, bolted crossways, into the holes, andthen 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 theytook fire, they made such a noise, and tore and split up the tree inso many places, and in such a manner, that we could see plainly suchanother blast would demolish it; and so it did. Thus at the second timewe could, at two or three places, put our hands in them, and discovereda cheat, namely, that there was a cave or hole dug into the earth, fromor through the bottom of the hollow, and that it had communication withanother cave farther in, where we heard the voices of several of thewild folks, calling and talking to one another.
When we came thus far we had a great mind to get at them; and Williamdesired that three men might be given him with hand-grenadoes; and hepromi
sed to go down first, and boldly he did so; for William, to givehim his due, had the heart of a lion.
They had pistols in their hands, and swords by their sides; but, as theyhad taught the Indians before by their stink-pots, the Indians returnedthem in their own kind; for they made such a smoke come up out of theentrance into the cave or hollow, that William and his three men wereglad to come running out of the cave, and out of the tree too, for merewant of breath; and indeed they were almost stifled.
Never was a fortification so well defended, or assailants so many waysdefeated. We were now for giving it over, and particularly I calledWilliam, and told him I could not but laugh to see us spinning out ourtime here for nothing; that I could not imagine what we were doing; thatit was certain that the rogues that were in it were cunning to thelast degree, and it would vex anybody to be so baulked by a few nakedignorant fellows; but still it was not worth our