Ansons Voyage Round the World | Page 8

door of the great cabin. The
boatswain immediately reprimanded them and ordered them to be gone.
On this Orellana spoke to his followers in his native language when
four of them drew off, two towards each gangway, and the chief and
the six remaining Indians seemed to be slowly quitting the quarter-deck.
When the detached Indians had taken possession of the gangways,
Orellana placed his hands hollow to his mouth and bellowed out the
war-cry used by those savages, which is said to be the harshest and
most terrifying sound known in nature. This hideous yell was the signal
for beginning the massacre, for on this the Indians all drew their knives
and brandished their prepared double-headed shot, and the six, with
their chief, who remained on the quarter-deck, immediately fell on the
Spaniards who were intermingled with them, and laid near forty of
them at their feet, of whom above twenty were killed on the spot, and
the rest disabled. Many of the officers, in the beginning of the tumult,
pushed into the great cabin, where they put out the lights and
barricaded the door. And of the others, who had avoided the first fury
of the Indians, some endeavoured to escape along the gangways into
the forecastle, but the Indians placed there on purpose stabbed the
greatest part of them as they attempted to pass by, or forced them off
the gangways into the waist. Others threw themselves voluntarily over
the barricades into the waist, and thought themselves happy to lie
concealed amongst the cattle; but the greatest part escaped up the
main-shrouds and sheltered themselves either in the tops or rigging;
and though the Indians attacked only the quarter-deck, yet the watch in
the forecastle, finding their communication cut off, and being terrified
by the wounds of the few who, not being killed on the spot, had
strength sufficient to force their passage along the gangways, and not
knowing either who their enemies were or what were their numbers,
they likewise gave all over for lost, and in great confusion ran up into
the rigging of the foremast and bowsprit.
Thus these eleven Indians, with a resolution perhaps without example,
possessed themselves almost in an instant of the quarter-deck of a ship
mounting sixty-six guns, with a crew of nearly five hundred men, and
continued in peaceable possession of this post a considerable time; for

the officers in the great cabin (amongst whom were Pizarro and
Mindinuetta), the crew between decks, and those who had escaped into
the tops and rigging, were only anxious for their own safety, and were
for a long time incapable of forming any project for suppressing the
insurrection and recovering the possession of the ship. It is true, the
yells of the Indians, the groans of the wounded and the confused
clamours of the crew, all heightened by the obscurity of the night, had
at first greatly magnified their danger, and had filled them with the
imaginary terrors which darkness, disorder, and an ignorance of the real
strength of an enemy never fail to produce. For as the Spaniards were
sensible of the disaffection of their pressed hands, and were also
conscious of their barbarity to their prisoners, they imagined the
conspiracy was general, and considered their own destruction as
infallible; so that, it is said, some of them had once taken the resolution
of leaping into the sea, but were prevented by their companions.
However, when the Indians had entirely cleared the quarter-deck, the
tumult in a great measure subsided; for those who had escaped were
kept silent by their fears, and the Indians were incapable of pursuing
them to renew the disorder. Orellana, when he saw himself master of
the quarter-deck, broke open the arm chest, which, on a slight suspicion
of mutiny, had been ordered there a few days before, as to a place of
the greatest security. Here, he took it for granted, he should find
cutlasses sufficient for himself and his companions, in the use of which
weapon they were all extremely skilful, and with these, it was imagined,
they proposed to have forced the great cabin; but on opening the chest
there appeared nothing but firearms, which to them were of no use.
There were indeed cutlasses in the chest, but they were hid by the
firearms being laid over them. This was a sensible disappointment to
them, and by this time Pizarro and his companions in the great cabin
were capable of conversing aloud, through the cabin windows and
port-holes, with those in the gun-room and between decks; and from
hence they learned that the English (whom they principally suspected)
were all safe below, and had not intermeddled in this mutiny; and by
other particulars they at last discovered that none were concerned in it
but