Timpoochee recovered enough by the following day to want to leave the Yonega settlement.
But first, he thought, he and his men should see the public ceremony of surrender by the British to the Spanish. Panton had assured him would be a grand and educational spectacle.
The ceremony was to take place the next day.
Timpoochee and his men spent the day preparing for their journey.
In an unexplained stroke of luck the boats had been left, untouched it appeared, at the wharf where they docked what seemed now like weeks ago.
They would drift quietly away, Timpoochee reasoned, while the surrender ceremony was in its final moments.
As he was checking the boats one final time before setting sail Timpoochee was approached by a Spanish soldier, silver helmet ablaze in the midday sun.
“Alto!,” the soldier shouted, clearly a command Timpoochee thought.
“Detén lo que estás haciendo. ¿A dónde vas?”
Yet another Yonega tongue I will need to learn, Timpoochee thought.
But realizing the soldier’s aggression Timpoochee turned his attention from the boat to the soldier.
Another man, a British man, also quickly arrived on the scene. He began talking to the soldier, in the soldier’s tongue.
“The sergeant is wanting to know why you are leaving,” the man explained.
“We are leaving for our home, in the mountains, and peace,” Timpoochee replied. “Our people will wonder why we have been gone so long.”
The Englishman translated.
“No!” the soldier commanded.