At the very midst of this the Portugals formed a stout group, back to back, shoulder to shoulder, and with their muskets tried to blow an opening in the ranks of the attackers. And sure indeed the firing did great harm. But fighting with musket is a slow business at such a wild melee, when one is loading and firing and reloading and alclass="underline" in a proper formation the musket cannot be bettered, with defenders properly placed, but we were caught unprepared and we died by the dozens. They came in upon us jabbing with their lances and slashing with their daggers, and if we shot one down, two more confronted us, and all the while their deadly arrows soared above us and struck us most sorely.
This killing was a new thing for me, at least at such close range, so that I knew the face of my victim and smelled his sweat as I despatched him. It is true that when I did ship aboard the Margaret and John in the campaign against the Spanish Armada I took part in warfare that was no child’s sport, indeed killing of the most real kind. At that time I loaded heavy shot into the guns and jumped back and watched the balls smash into the sides of Spanish ships, that promptly went up into flames and were shattered: that surely is warfare. Certainly many Spaniards died then, and I had my share of the sending of them to Hell. But there is a difference—O, a very great difference!—between toiling in a gun crew on a ship to fire balls at faceless enemies some hundreds of yards away aboard another vessel, and reaching out with your own hand to snuff the life of one single man who stands right before you. The one is a remote deed, the other a killing most intimate. So this was a baptism of slaughter for me here that day. I did not think of the death of Tristão Caldeira de Rodrigues as my killing of him, but only as his perishing by his own folly, that would not have happened but by his greed.
In the company of some two score Portugals I fought my way through the mob of howling ring-jangling blackamoor warriors to a low rise east of the main encounter. On the top of this pale sandy ridge there grew tall many-armed leafless plants whose limbs were bright green and fleshy and armed with most terrible black thorns. We squeezed ourselves between the ranks of these close-packed little trees, in the doing of which their thorns did cut me most cruelly, so that trails of blood ran down my skin in thirty places. But once we were behind them, these formidably armed vegetations formed a secure palisado that shielded us from the furious advance of the foe. We lay down or crouched, and aimed our muskets with care, and sent our shot into their hearts or into their heads by one and one and one, which created a heaping mound of fallen blacks below our ridge.
And while we did this killing, we also ventured out, a few of us at a time, to locate and bring to safety such other Portugals as passed our way. When we saw any, we slipped through that evil thicket and waved to them with our arms and cried out in the Portugal tongue until they heard us over the din of the battle, and if they were wounded we went to their side to fetch them, while our companions aimed their muskets at any enemy that periled us.
I myself went out four times in these forays, and on the fourth it was Barbosa whom I found and brought safely in. He had been skewered by a dart in the fleshy part of his arm; but he refused my attentions and called for fresh shot for his musket, and lay down beside us to fight.
So it went for perhaps the half part of an hour. We scarce had time to draw a peaceful breath, but that a new wave of the attackers came toward us. The hideous sound of their little ringing bells that dangled from their bodies did fright us terribly, and the music of their battle-orders screeched and thundered above all other sounds. Little flying insects no bigger than midges hovered over me like a buzzing cloud, settling in my sweat and most especially in the rivulets of blood, thickening and sticky, from the many gashes and gouges the green thorn-plants had inflicted upon my skin.
So long as we held safe behind our natural palisado, they could not reach us. But we had only so much powder and so much shot, and no matter how loud we called upon Jesus and the Apostles, they were not likely to supply us more.
First this Portugal and then that one exhausted his ammunition, so that our position became hopeless. The savages did crawl low and try forcing their way through the thorns, which gave them less trouble than they did us. Some worked on the outside, in the undermining of the bushes with their clubs and lances, but the doing of this they found most difficult. Yet others were able to hack entry, chopping at the limbs of the plants and cutting them apart, from which sundered places a strange milky blood did flow.
Barbosa, beside me, seized the first of them who penetrated our refuge, digging his hands into the thick wool of the man’s hair and pulling him down.
“Yours!” he cried to me, and I smote the man with the butt of my empty musket, so that his head cracked and he pitched downward into the sand, blood gushing from his ears. Barbosa did seize the foeman’s lance, and thrust it robustly into the next who ventured through the breach in the shrubbery, while I in turn dragged his body inward and piled it atop the first, to repair the breach. And so we fought on and on for long minutes, that seemed days to me.
In the meanwhile archers of the enemy did aim their shafts toward us in our place of sanctuary. Most of these struck the plants and were embedded therein, making more of the milky fluid gush forth—some of which, striking my lips and one eye, did sting me most fiercely, and my eyelid swelled so great that for a time I was hard put to see. For these were poison-plants, whose milk had the very fire of Satan in it, and whose deadly nature did manifest itself by the outgrowth of thorns on their skins.
A few of the arrows finding their way between the tight-laced branches worked damage among us. Shielded as we were, we suffered many injuries, and now we no longer dared venture out to recover others of our company. It seemed only a brief while before we must needs be overwhelmed. I cursed the inanity of our generals, that had led us into this impasse, and I wished a thousand times for the snugness of the dungeon at São Paulo de Loanda, where there were no ungodly plants to bathe me in their searing milk nor wild savages to threaten me with arrows. But as I thought such thoughts I also fought most strenuously, using my musket’s butt until the weapon cracked in two and I tossed it aside, and then employing a lance that I took from a fallen African, opening with it the guts of more than several of our enemies. Yet were they hundreds to our dozens, and their arrows came whistling and singing in through the increasingly large openings in our palisado, and how long could we endure?
There was yet another thorny rise a fair distance behind ours. Someone among us proposed that we effect a retreat to that, and attempt thereby to lose ourselves in a parched forest that lay on the far side. If we withdrew far enough, it might be that no pursuers would detect us, and we might escape, for winning this battle was hopeless and merely surviving was our chief goal. This seemed the best of a host of unsatisfying stratagems, and we began it, some of us crawling backward while others guarded the thorny barrier before it.
But as the rearward movement commenced, three Africans did succeed in breaking open a fair gap in the thorn-plants, and a pack of them came rushing through. We struck down the first, but more were after, and we had not enough men to deal with them all. To my distress I saw Barbosa struggling with two at once, and he no hearty bravo, only an old man of gentle demeanor unused to such brawls. I made toward him.
“Nay,” he cried. “Flee! Flee! I will hold them!”
That I could not countenance. So I came upon his foes, which now numbered three, and seized by the hair one great blackamoor with his cheeks painted all crimson and purple, and drew his face across a row of thorns, which wrung a hellish cry from him and sent him reeling away, blinded, and his face newly colored even further now with a mix of milky fluid of the plant and blood from his wounds. A second enemy I did catch on the tip of my lance and haul away from Barbosa, and then with a shift of my weight I spitted him through like a lamb, so thoroughly and well that I was not able to withdraw my lance, it being snagged on some interior part of him. Barbosa meanwhile had drawn his dagger and was keeping the last of his attackers at bay, chopping the air at him and defying him to come nearer. That one I did smite in the back with my fist and across the temple with the side of my other hand, a blow that I think took the life from him, for he fell like a clubbed ox.