Accordingly they made ready; but by the time they were ready to fire, the
black army had left their wandering about the poles, and began to stir as
if they would come on, though seeing more men stand at some distance behind
our negroes, they could not tell what to make of us; but if they did not
understand us before, they understood us less afterwards, for as soon as
ever our men found them to begin to move forward they fired among the
thickest of them, being about the distance of 120 yards, as near as we
could guess.

It is impossible to express the fright, the screaming and yelling of those
wretches upon this first volley. We killed six of them, and wounded eleven
or twelve, I mean as we knew of; for, as they stood thick, and the small
shot, as we called it, scattered among them, we had reason to believe we
wounded more that stood farther off, for our small shot was made of bits of
lead and bits of iron, heads of nails, and such things as our diligent
artificer, the cutler, helped us to.

As to those that were killed and wounded, the other frighted creatures were
under the greatest amazement in the world, to think what should hurt them,
for they could see nothing but holes made in their bodies they knew not
how. Then the fire and noise amazed all their women and children, and
frighted them out of their wits, so that they ran staring and howling about
like mad creatures.

However, all this did not make them fly, which was what we wanted, nor did
we find any of them die as it were with fear, as at first; so we resolved
upon a second volley, and then to advance as we did before. Whereupon our
reserved men advancing, we resolved to fire only three men at a time, and
move forward like an army firing in platoon; so, being all in a line, we
fired, first three on the right, then three on the left, and so on; and