The deception had been complete. 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.
The growing fears of the Spanish soldiery at the prospect of a
night attack from the landward side by the entire buccaneer force
- and a force twice as strong as they had suspected the pestilent
Blood to command - began to be communicated to the Admiral.
In the last hours of fading daylight, the Spaniards did precisely
what Captain Blood so confidently counted that they would do -
precisely what they must do to meet the attack, preparations for
which had been so thoroughly simulated. They set themselves to
labour like the damned at those ponderous guns emplaced to
command the narrow passage out to sea.
Groaning and sweating, urged on by the curses and even the whips
of their officers, they toiled in a frenzy of panic-stricken haste
to shift the greater number and the more powerful of their guns
across to the landward side, there to emplace them anew, so that
they might be ready to receive the attack which at any moment now
might burst upon them from the woods not half a mile away.
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