An English pirate burns down a Spanish fortification by pulling an arrow from his chest, shooting it out of his musket – which ignited it – and starting a fire. Metal AF.

>Dusk provided cover, and the Spaniards fired at black shapes moving across black ground. The buccaneers dropped to their knees and raked the walls as their comrades slipped ahead and launched fireballs at the palm-leaf roof that sheltered the Spanish musketeers from rain and sun. The battle raged on until, according to Esquemeling, an act of sheer physical courage altered its course: >>One of the pirates was wounded with an arrow in his back, which pierced his body to the other side. This instantly he pulled out with great valour at the side of his breast then taking a little cotton that he had about him, he wound it about the said arrow, and putting it into his musket, he shot it back into the castle. But the cotton being kindled by the powder, occasioned two or three houses that were within the castle… to take fire. >The fire crept onward until it caught onto a “parcel of powder” (in Spanish reports it was loaded bronze cannon), which exploded, raining flame and burning thatch onto the roof and the wooden walls. Other buccaneers snapped up arrows and shot them toward the looming castle. The Spanish rushed to douse the flames, but every musketeer pulled into firefighting duty was a loss to the fort’s defenses, and the pirates began picking off figures silhouetted against the flames. ________________________________ **Source:** Talty, Stephan. “The Isthmus.” *Empire of Blue Water: Captain Morgan’s Great Pirate Army, the Epic Battle for the Americas, and the Catastrophe That Ended the Outlaws’ Bloody Reign*. New York: Crown Publishing Group (NY), 2007. 215-16. Print. ________________________________ **Further Reading:** [Alexandre Olivier Exquemelin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandre_Exquemelin)