Читать книгу The Life of Sir Henry Morgan. With an account of the English settlement of the island of Jamaica онлайн

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Many privateers and buccaneers of several nations, who had long haunted the petty island of Tortuga and the adjoining coast of Hispaniola, had gladly availed themselves of the safer harbour and more convenient base of operations at Cagua, and some of them had been given letters-of-marque against Spain by Brayne or D'Oyley. Yssasi, who was vigilant and alert in gathering information, reported that in "that port there were generally fifteen or twenty vessels, some entering, some leaving, with a reserve of eight ships of war." He added that D'Oyley had held a general muster and review of all his troops in March and found that he had three thousand foot, many of them boys, and the greater part serving through compulsion.[20]

A prisoner taken in a canoe on his way to Cuba told D'Oyley that three hundred Spaniards were forming a magazine at Las Chorreras (Ocho Rios) and fortifying it in the expectation of being reinforced. Leaving one hundred men to guard their plantations, he promptly embarked the remainder of the troops under Steevens in a small warship and sailed to attack this party. A ship just coming over from Cuba with soldiers and supplies was driven off before it could reach land, and D'Oyley then disembarked his force in a bay six miles further west, as he found no suitable landing place nearer the enemy. Marching through the woods he was attacked from an ambush, but his men being well prepared for this by his orders, fired a single volley in reply and instantly charged, routing their assailants and pursuing them so fiercely that few were able to regain the shelter of their stockade, which was built "with great Trees and Flankers". Placing a third of his force in reserve D'Oyley advanced to its assault with the rest. There was "a stiff dispute" for three-quarters of an hour, until the storming party cut a passage through the palisades with their hatchets, when most of their opponents tried to escape by running out over the rocks and throwing themselves into the bay in spite of the desperate efforts of their officers to rally them, "yet made not such haste", D'Oyley wrote, "but that they left One hundred and twenty or thereabouts dead on the place, and many wounded, amongst whom were most of the Officers; the Mastre del Campo, Don Francisco de Prencia, by means of a Prisoner of ours, whom he kept by him, got quarter, and some others whom we found in the Rocks whom (though we had received barbarous usage from them) we could not kill in cold blood."[21]