However, about eight o’clock in the morning, as soon as the land breeze sprang up, the enemy’s fleet weighed and stood to sea, endeavouring to get to windward of the port, and continued on this course till evening; and Don Pedro Tello perceiving that the object was to run at once into the port, went ashore to explain to the general his apprehension that the enemy was about to bear down directly on the place: that the two ships which had been already sunk did not completely close up the entrance to it, and that it was expedient to sink two frigates in the part that still remained open, inasmuch as the complete barring of the entrance and the security of the port were quite as important as the two frigates, for many reasons, and for the good of His Majesty’s service.
General Sancho Pardo immediately held a council with the governor and other officers, and they decided that one frigate should be sunk in the channel, in case that a ship belonging to Pedro Sedeño, which was lying there laden with merchandise, and another of less size, should prove insufficient; that these should be sunk immediately, just as they were, as there was not time to unload them, and that the frigate should be sunk whenever Don Pedro thought proper.
At four o’clock in the afternoon the enemy came running down with the breeze towards the port, and Don Pedro Tello, believing that he was making directly for it, sank the two vessels of Sedeño and Juan Diaz de Sancta Aña, and also the Texeda frigate, without being able, owing to the short time allowed, to take out of them all the provisions and guns, although a part was saved; and thus the entrance of the channel was completely closed, and about vesper time the enemy came to anchor between the Rock and Goat island, where he had lain at anchor the night before.
The circumstance that the fleet anchored, and nearer than before to the port, tended to confirm the suspicion that the enemy meant to attempt that very night to finish the burning of the frigates, and to land people. Don Pedro Tello, therefore, with the consent of the governor, had the three frigates brought back to the interior of the port, and they were placed in the Tejar with a guard to secure them; but he had no fears about the landing of a force, seeing the spirit which animated our people, and that all the posts and landing-places were well entrenched and strengthened. The removal of the frigates took place at night, when the enemy could see nothing, and consequently the next morning he concluded that they had been all sunk. The night passed off quietly, without any effort on our part to shew that we were well on the watch.