being the assailants, found themselves obliged to look
to their defence. Watling, their chief, was killed, as
were two quarter-masters, the boatswain, and some
others of their best men ; and the rest thought it
necessary to retreat to their boats, which, though
harassed the whole way by a distant firing from the
Spaniards, they effected in tolerable order, and em-
barked.
In this attack the buccaneers lost, in killed and
taken prisoners by the Spaniards, twenty-eight men,
and of those who got back to the ship eighteen were
wounded. Among the men taken by the Spaniards
were two surgeons, to whose care the wounded had
been committed. "We could have brought off our
doctors," says Ringrose, " but they got to drinking
whilst we were assaulting the fort, and when we called
them they would not come with us." The Spaniards
gave quarter to the surgeons, " they being able to do
them good service in that country ; but as to the
wounded men taken prisoners, they were all knocked
on the head ".
The whole party that landed at Arica narrowly
escaped destruction, for the Spaniards learnt, from the
prisoners they took, the signals which had been agreed
upon with the men' left in charge of the boats; of
which information they made such use that the boats
had quitted their station and set sail to run down to
the town, but some buccaneers, who had. been most
speedy in the retreat, arrived at the sea-side just in
time to call them back.
