United States or Iran ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
And everywhere a feeling of snakes wicked water-snakes with yellow rims around their eyes. "They crossed great rivers, Ockmulgee, Oconee, Ogechee, making a bridge of men and paddling their way across with the help of saddle cruppers and horses' tails. If the waters were too deep for that, they made piraguas dug-out canoes, you know and rafts of cane.
Then, all being aboard the three ships, with the treasure safely stowed in their holds and the slaves under hatches, the buccaneers weighed anchor and stood out for the bar, each vessel towing three piraguas astern.
The fleet stood in during the afternoon to within a mile of the coast, and under cover of darkness three hundred men, of whom two hundred were negroes the whole of the negro contingent having been pressed into the undertaking were pulled away for the shore in the canoes, piraguas, and ships' boats.
So considerate was he that to assist them he presented them with several of the piraguas which he still had in tow. "You will find," said he to her captain, "that Don Miguel is in an extremely bad temper. Commend me to him, and say that I venture to remind him that he must blame himself for all the ills that have befallen him.
Don Miguel could not guess that the men he had beheld in those piraguas were always the same; that on the journeys to the shore they sat and stood upright in full view; and that on the journeys back to the ships, they lay invisible at the bottom of the boats, which were thus made to appear empty.
After a little while, Esteban, who kept his eyes on the water, plucked at his uncle's sleeve. "There they go!" he cried, and pointed. And there, indeed, went the piraguas on their way back to the ships. But now it was observed that they were empty, save for the men who rowed them. Their armed cargo had been left ashore.
Soto came over in the second trip of the piraguas, accompanied by sixty men; and the Indians, on seeing the Spanish force increase, retired to a fortified town in the neighbourhood, whence they frequently sallied out to skirmish with the Spaniards; but as the cavalry killed many of them with their spears, they evacuated that place during the night.
By then the piraguas had made a half-dozen journeys with their loads of men, and they had landed also as Don Miguel had clearly observed through his telescope at least a dozen guns. His countenance no longer smiled; it was a little wrathful and a little troubled now as he turned again to his officers. "Who was the fool who told me that they number but three hundred men in all?
It is not safe to venture nearer land than three quarters of a mile." "But our landing will be effected in canoes and piraguas and open boats," cried an officer impatiently. "In the calmest season of the year, the surf will hinder any such operation. And you will also bear in mind that if landing were possible as you are suggesting, that landing could not be covered by the ships' guns.
The navigation in this archipelago is difficult and even dangerous owing to the strength and number of the currents, and nothing can appear worse adapted for so perilous a sea than the piraguas or boats which are used by the islanders.
Word Of The Day