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

35 страница из 128

According to a Spanish account, which seems reliable, Mings's fleet had by that time been increased to eighteen sail, and he landed nine hundred men, who, the writer justly remarks, were not buccaneers but seasoned soldiers discharged from service since the completion of the conquest of Jamaica. As the Spaniards had expected an attack upon the castle and neighbouring batteries protecting the harbour's mouth, the disembarkation was quite unopposed. Some inhabitants fled to the town to give the alarm.

"Before our whole party was on shore itt was night," Mings wrote, "the place rocky and narrow, wee were forced to advance the van in the wood to make way to the reare to land, the path so narrow that but one man could march at a tyme, the way soe difficult and the night soe dark that wee were forced to make stand and fires, and our guides with brands in their hands to beat the path."

The country over which they advanced is cut up with gullies and ledges of jagged rock, now thickly overgrown with gnarled trees and a tangle of tropic underwood firmly rooted in the clefts and fissures, which is scarcely penetrable. Yet the movement was continued with such perseverance that at daybreak the vanguard arrived at a plantation by the riverside six miles from the landing-place, and only three miles from the town. There a halt was made to eat and drink. Then being favoured by daylight and a passable road the march was cautiously resumed.