The Englishmen were clumsy conspirators.

We watched them arrive, let them pass, and followed silently on their heels.

Their business was wreckage, and they fixed a charge of powder by the tobacco shed, laid and lit a fuse, and retired discreetly into the bushes to watch their handiwork.
Then we fell upon them, and the hindquarters of all bore witness to our greeting.
I caught the fellow who had laid the fuse, tied the whole thing round his neck, clapped a pistol to his ear, and marched him before me into the town.

"If you are minded to bolt," I said, "remember you have a charge of gunpowder lobbing below your chin.

I have but to flash my pistol into it, and they will be picking the bits of you off the high trees." I took the rascal, his knees knocking under him, straight to the ordinary where the English merchants chiefly forgathered.