and bits of silver coin, which had penetrated only skin deep. "We also
observed that several of the poor rebel negroes, who had been shot, had
only the shards of Spa-water cans instead of flints, which could seldom
do execution; and it was certainly owing to these circumstances that we
came off so well."

The rebels at length retreated, first setting fire to their village; a
hundred or more lightly built houses, some of them two stories high, were
soon in flames; and as this conflagration occupied the only neck of land
between two impassable morasses, the troops were unable to follow, and
the Maroons had left nothing but rice-fields to be pillaged. That night
the military force was encamped in the woods; their ammunition was almost
gone, so they were ordered to lie flat on the ground, even in case of
attack; they could not so much as build a fire. Before midnight an attack
was made on them, partly with bullets, and partly with words. The Maroons
were all around them in the forest, but their object was a puzzle; they
spent most of the night in bandying compliments with the black rangers,
whom they alternately denounced, ridiculed, and challenged to single
combat. At last Fougeaud and Stedman joined in the conversation, and
endeavored to make this midnight volley of talk the occasion for a
treaty. This was received with inextinguishable laughter, which echoed
through the woods like a concert of screech-owls, ending in a _charivari_
of horns and hallooing. The colonel, persisting, offered them "life,
liberty, victuals, drink, and all they wanted;" in return, they ridiculed
him unmercifully. He was a half-starved Frenchman, who had run away from
his own country, and would soon run away from theirs; they profoundly
pitied him and his soldiers; they would scorn to spend powder on such
scarecrows; they would rather feed and clothe them, as being poor white
slaves, hired to be shot at, and starved for fourpence a day. But as for
the planters, overseers, and rangers, they should die, every one of them,