Part 16

Having got the pinnaces and all things in readiness within a week’s time, the fleet was off for their first foray. Coming to the Isla de Pinos (Isles of Pines), a group at the mouth of the Gulf of Darien (called by them “Port Plenty”), they found here two frigates for Nombre de Dios lading planks and timber, with a number of black men on board at work. These blacks were half-breeds, belonging to a local tribe sprung from self-freed Negro slaves and native Indians, known as “Cimaroons,” or “Maroons,” as the English sailors termed them, enrolled under two chiefs, and constant enemies of the Spanish. The frigates were seized, and the black men were taken to the mainland and set ashore to join their tribe and gain their liberty if they would, or, if they were disposed to warn Nombre de Dios, to make the troublesome journey overland, which they could not finish before the Englishmen could reach the place by sea. Then leaving the three ships with the prize in charge of Captain Rouse, and taking fifty-three of his own men and twenty of Rouse’s band, and adding Rouse’s shallop to his fleet of pinnaces, Drake “hastened his own going with speed and secrecy.” Five days later they had arrived at the island of “Cativaas” (Catives), off the mouth of the St. Francis, to the westward of which Nombre de Dios lay. Here they landed and spent part of a day making ready for the assault. Drake distributed the arms among the men and delivered a heartening speech setting before them the “greatness of the hope of good things” in this store house of treasure which might be theirs for the taking. That afternoon they again set sail and at sunset they were alongside the main. Keeping “hard aboard the shore” that they might not be “descried of the Watch House,” they made their cautious way till they had come within two leagues of the port. At this point they anchored till after dark. Then again “rowing hard aboard shore,” as quietly as they could, they attained a sheltered place in the harbour under high land, where they lay “all silent,” purposing to make the attack at daylight. When, however, talk of the “greatness of the town” and of its strength for defence, based upon stories told by the blacks at the Isles of Pines, was found to be spreading among the men, Drake “thought it best to put these conceits out of their heads,” by prompter action, taking advantage of the rising of the moon that night which he would persuade them “was the day dawning.” By this strategy the advance was begun at three o’clock, a “large houre sooner than first was purposed.”

The surprise of the town was complete. As the four pinnaces were sailing forward, the rowers noiselessly plying their oars, a Spanish ship laden with Canary wines, newly arrived in the bay, espied them, and immediately sent off one of her boats townward, evidently to give an alarm. But Drake dexterously checked this move by cutting “betwixt her and the Towne forcing her to goe to the other side of the bay.” At the landing place a platform was found fortified with “six great pieces of ordnance mounted upon the carriages,” but only a single gunner on guard. The gunner fled to arouse the town, while Drake’s men dismantled the guns. Then Drake marched his men up a neighbouring hill, where he had heard that ordnance was to be placed that night, to dismantle it if found. But none had yet been set, and he hurried back now to make direct for the town’s treasure. Leaving a guard at the platform to secure the pinnaces, and a trumpeter to sound his trumpet at intervals while the other trumpeters were sounding theirs in other parts, to give an impression of a large force of besiegers, Drake divided his men into two companies. One, of sixteen men, under his brother John, was to execute a flank movement upon the King’s Treasure House near by; the other, led by himself, was to march up the broad main street to the Market Place, where the two were to come together. Meanwhile the alarm-bell of the church had been set a-ringing by an official of the town, drums were beating, and the startled people were mustering in the Market Place, their first thought being that their common enemy, the Cimaroons, were upon them.

Drake led his men with trumpets playing and drums beating, and their “firepikes” lighting the way, into the Market Place, and were here “saluted” by a body of Spanish soldiers and people lined up near the Governor’s House, with a “jolly hot volley of shot.” The Englishmen returned this “greeting” with a flight of arrows. Then they brought their firepikes and their short weapons into effective play, and soon routed the town’s defenders, who fled out of the gate—the only gate of the town—leading toward Panama. In this skirmish Drake received a painful wound in the leg. But he valiantly concealed his hurt, “knowing if the generall’s heart stoops the men’s will fail.” Now making their stand in the Market Place, Drake commanded two or three Spaniards whom he had taken prisoner in the flight to conduct him with a detachment to the Governor’s House. It was here that the long teams of mules bringing the king’s treasure from Panama were unladen and the silver placed, while the gold, pearls, and jewels were deposited in the stronger-built (of lime and stone) King’s Treasure House. The door of the Governor’s House was found open, and before it a fine Spanish horse, ready saddled. Entering, by means of a lighted candle on the stairs, they saw a vast heap of silver in the lower room. This consisted of silver bars piled up against the wall, some “seventy feet in length, ten in breadth, and twelve in height, each bar between thirty and forty pounds weight,” as they calculated, about the value of “a million sterling.” Drake ordered his men not to attempt to take any of this plunder, for the town was so full of people that it would be impossible to remove it; but at the King’s Treasure House, near the water side, he told them there was “more gold and jewels than all of” their “four pinnaces could carry away”; and he would presently send out a force to break it open.

Accordingly they returned to the Market Place, thence to go for the Treasure House. Back in the Market Place they received a startling report that their pinnaces were in danger of capture. John Drake was hurried to the landing with a guard to meet this emergency. He found the force there much alarmed by a report of a Negro spy that the Spanish soldiers which the blacks at the Isles of Pines had told them had been ordered from Panama, to defend the town from an expected attack of the Cimaroons, had arrived. John Drake quieted their fears. Now a new trouble arose. A “mighty shower of rain” with a “terrible storm of thunder and lightning” burst upon the town. Drake and his men sought shelter near the King’s Treasure House. But before they had got under cover some of their bow-strings were wet, and their match and powder hurt. Some of the men began “harping on the reports lately brought” and “muttering of the forces of the town.” Thereupon Drake exclaimed that here he had brought them to the “mouth of the Treasure of the World,” and if they did not gain it they “might henceforth blame nobody but themselves.” So soon as the fury of the storm had abated Drake ordered John Drake and John Oxenham, another officer, to break open the Treasure House, the rest to follow him to “keep the strength” of the Market Place till their work was done. But as he stepped forward he suddenly fell prone in a swoon from loss of blood from his wound, which to this moment he had successfully concealed. This produced consternation among the band. Upon his revival his scarf was bound about the wound, and he was entreated to go aboard his pinnace to have it dressed. He persistently refused, and finally, “with force mingled with fair entreaty” he was seized and borne to his boat. Then all hurriedly embarked and got away, with what little plunder a few had managed to pick up.

So was abandoned “a rich spoil for the present,” but “only to preserve their captain’s life.” It was afterward admitted by the Spaniards that but for the mishap to Drake necessitating their precipitate departure, the buccaneers would have fully succeeded in sacking the town.

It was but daybreak when they left. They had besides the captain “many of their men wounded, though none slain but one trumpeter.” On their way out of the harbour they tarried long enough to capture, “without much resistance,” the Spanish ship lying there with her cargo of wines, “for the more comfort of the company.” Before they had quite cleared the haven the Spaniards on shore had got one of the great guns into play upon them. But the shot fell short of their boats. They landed with their prize at the Isle of Bartimentos, or, as they called it, the “Isle of Victuals,” westward of Nombre de Dios. Here they stayed through the next two days to “cure their wounded and refresh themselves” in the “goodly gardens” they found “abounding with great store of all dainty roots and fruits, besides great plenty of poultry and other fowls no less strange and delicate.” Return was then made to the Isles of Pines, where Captain Rouse with their ships was joined.

Thus the incident of the famous raid upon Nombre de Dios, the first object of the expedition, closed with small gain. Hakluyt gives a brief and incomplete account of it, written and recorded, as his title relates, by “one Lopez Vaz a Portugall, borne in the citie of Elvas, in maner follow: which Portugale, with the discourse about him, was taken in the River of Plate by the ships set foorth by the Right Honourable the Earle of Cumberland, in the yeere 1586.” The larger account, which Drake himself is said to have “reviewed,” or edited, was not published until more than half a century after the event. It then appeared in a history of the expedition, brought out in 1626, under this inspiriting title: _Sir Francis Drake Revived; Calling upon this Dull or Effeminate Age to follow his noble steps for Gold and Silver, By this Memorable Relation of the Rare Occurrences (never yet declared to the world) in a third voyage made by him unto the West Indies, in the years 1572 & 1573 when Nombre de Dios was by him, and 52 others only in his company, Surprised_.

Subsequent exploits made up for the failure to loot the “Treasure of the World.” Shortly after the return to the Isles of Pines Captain Rouse parted company with the expedition and went his own way, while Drake continued his enterprise alone, as he had originally planned. His next assault was to be against Cartagena. Toward this port he at once sailed his own fleet, the two ships and the three pinnaces. Arriving in the harbour he found here a “great ship of Seville” making ready to sail for San Domingo. This he took in sight of the town, but beyond the reach of its “great guns,” which opened upon him. The next morning he captured two frigates from Nombre de Dios for Cartagena, on board of which were two “Scrivanos” (escribano, a notary), with letters reporting his attack on Nombre de Dios and his continued presence on the coast, warning the Cartagenians to “prepare for him.” From them ascertaining that he was now discovered to the chief places along the main, he made no further advance upon Cartagena, but sought instead a good hiding-place till the “bruit” of his being here “might cease”; intending later to make an alliance with the Cimaroons and raid the treasure route between Panama and Nombre de Dios. Meanwhile the “Swan” was scuttled in order thoroughly to man the pinnaces, and the “Pasha” was utilized as a storehouse. During the next two months roving the coast with the pinnaces, many Spanish ships were seized and relieved of their cargoes, mostly provisions for “victualling” Nombre de Dios and Cartagena, and also the fleets to and from Spain. Such quantities of provisions of all kinds were thus obtained that the company built and stocked at different points, on islands and on the main, four storehouses; and there was sufficient as the season advanced to supply besides themselves, the Cimaroons, and also two French ships that fell in with them in “extreme want.” Later their rendezvous was at the mouth of the Rio Diego, where they built a fort which they called “Fort Diego.” In October, while attempting to take a frigate, John Drake was killed. Early in January the “calenture,” or hot fever, broke out among the company, and several died, among them Drake’s younger brother Joseph.

On the third of February the land journey across the isthmus toward Panama was begun. At that time twenty-eight of the company had died, and several were yet ill. Since it was necessary to leave a few sound men with the sick ones, the number that made this march was only eighteen. The rest of the band were Cimaroons, thirty in all. The highest point of the dividing ridge was reached on the eleventh of February when Drake, from a tree top, got his first sight of the Pacific and uttered his earnest prayer familiar in the histories, to be permitted once to sail an English ship upon it. The chronicler of the voyage thus well portrays the animating scene:

"The fourth day following we came to the height of the desired hill, a very high hill lying East and West, like a ridge between the two seas, about ten of the clock; where the chiefest of these Cimaroons took our Captain by the hand and prayed him to follow him if he was desirous to see at once the two seas, which he had so longed for. Here was that goodly and great high Tree in which they had cut and made divers steps to ascend up near unto the top, where they had also made a convenient bower wherein ten or twelve men might easily sit: and from thence we might without any difficulty plainly see the Atlantic Ocean whence now we came and the South Atlantic [Pacific Ocean] so much desired. South and north of this Tree they had felled certain trees that the prospect might be the clearer.... After our Captain had ascended to this bower with the chief Cimaroon, and having, as it pleased God, at this time by reason of the breeze a very fair day, had seen that sea of which he had heard such golden reports: he ‘besought Almighty God of His Goodness, to give him life and leave to sail once in an English ship in that Sea!’ And then calling up all the rest of our [seventeen English] men he acquainted John Oxnam [Oxenham] especially with this his petition and purpose, if it would please God to grant him that happiness. Who understanding it presently protested that ‘unless our Captain did beat him from his company he would follow him by God’s grace.’"

Drake’s outlook is supposed to have been near the spot where Balboa, the discoverer, sixty years earlier, had “thanked God” that he was “the first Christian man to behold that sea”; and it is presumed that Drake had Balboa’s thanksgiving in mind when he framed his ardent prayer.

Two days later the band had come to the open region of savannas over which savage herds of black cattle roamed, whence glimpses of Panama (the old city north of the present one) were had. As they marched on, Drake saw the Spanish ships riding in the harbour; the Pacific beyond stretching placidly to the horizon. Now they were within a day’s journey of the city. Toward sunset they reached the shelter of a grove through which the road ran, about a league from Panama. Here they rested while Drake despatched a spy, disguised as a Negro servant, into the city—a Cimaroon who had once served a master there and so was familiar with the place—to learn all about the movements of the “recuas:” the mule treasure and merchandise teams. The spy returned after dark with the joyous word that that very night a string of mule teams was to come out. The richest was to head the line accompanying the Spanish treasurer of Lima, Peru, on the way with his family to Nombre de Dios, there to take an “advice ship” in waiting for Spain. This team comprised fourteen mules, of which eight were laden with gold and one with jewels. Two others immediately to follow were each of fifty mules, and were to carry provisions for the fleet at Nombre de Dios, with a small quantity of silver. They were to make the journey in the cool of the night, and to take the route by way of Venta Cruz (Cruces, on the left bank of the Chagres River). With this information Drake determined to intercept the whole string and take off the richest treasure. Accordingly the march was resumed away from Panama and toward Venta Cruz, some four leagues distant.

They came to a halt in a secluded spot about two leagues south of the town. Near by one of the Cimaroons scented out a Spanish soldier, whom they literally caught napping. He was one of the guard hired to protect the Lima treasurer’s train outward from Venta Cruz, and while waiting, knowing that he could get no rest till their safe arrival at Nombre de Dios, he had lain down in the grass and dropped asleep. He was terrorized at falling into the hands of the merciless Cimaroons, and being brought into the presence of Drake he plead for protection. He assured the captain, on the honour of a soldier, that that night he might have, if he would, “more gold, besides jewels and pearls of great price” than all his men could carry, and for his own part he asked only as much of the plunder as would suffice for himself and wife to live on comfortably. Holding the soldier for what service he might render, Drake divided his band into two companies and ambushed in long grass on either side of the road. He headed one company, and John Oxenham, with the chief of the Cimaroons, the other. Drake’s lay on one side of the road some fifty paces above Oxenham’s on the opposite side. The foremost company were to seize the mules by their heads as the team came up, while the “hindmost” secured the rear: for the mules tied together were always driven one after the other. The Englishmen all drew their shirts over their apparel by Drake’s order that they might be sure to know each other in the “pell mell of the night.”

The two sections had thus lain for above an hour when the notes of deep sounding bells, which the mule teams invariably bore, were heard in the distance in both directions, betokening the approach of trains from and to Venta Cruz. Then the nearer sound of a horse trotting over the road fell on the listening ears. As it was passing the ambuscade one of the Englishmen, a sailor who had taken too much wine and become reckless, crept up close to the road and raised himself and gazed at the rider. He was a cavalier, well mounted, with a page running at his stirrup. A Cimaroon quickly pulled the sailor down and sat on him. But it was too late. The cavalier had caught sight of the white-shirted object, had recognized it as an Englishman of Drake’s crew, and had put spurs to his horse and galloped off to warn the approaching treasurer’s team of danger. Meeting it on the road the cavalier reported what he had seen, and his conjecture that Drake was in the neighbourhood for plunder of treasure teams to recompense himself for his failure at Nombre de Dios; and he persuaded the treasurer to turn his train out of the way, and let the others that were to follow pass first. Their loss, if “worse befel,” would be of far less account, while they would serve to discover the party in ambush. And just this happened. As the others with the lesser treasure reached the ambush the captains blew their whistles for the attack, and both teams were speedily taken; but the spoil, besides the provisions, netted not more than two “horse-loads” of silver, and Drake’s game was fully discovered. One of the chief carriers told him how their ambush had been exposed by the imprudent sailor and how the cavalier had spread the warning, and counselled his party to “shift for themselves betimes” unless they were able to combat the whole force of Panama before daybreak.

Instead, however, of following this advice Drake took that of the chief of the Cimaroons, which was that he should boldly march on to the town and “make a way with his sword through the enemies.” So, after enjoying a full supper of meat and drink from the captured provisions, the march upon Venta Cruz was begun. The band mounted the mules and thus made the journey comfortably. When within a mile of the town and in a deep woods they dismounted, and leaving the muleteers here, bidding them not to follow at their peril, made the remainder of the way on foot. Half a mile beyond a couple of Cimaroons of the advance guard discovered a Spanish force in ambush in a jungle at the side of the road. They were a body of soldiers with a number of fighting friars of a monastery at Venta Cruz. With this news Drake cautioned his men to move quietly, and pressed on. As they neared the ambuscade the Spanish captain appeared in the roadway before them and called out “Hoo!” Drake replied with the sailor’s response to a hail, “Hallo!” The Spaniard queried, “Que gente?” Drake answered, “Englishmen.” The Spaniard demanded their surrender, "in the name of the ‘King, his master,’" with the promise, as a “gentleman soldier,” of courteous treatment. Drake demanded passage “for the honour of the Queen, his mistress,” and advancing toward the Spaniard fired his pistol in the air. This was taken as a signal by the men in ambush and they let off a volley. Drake was scratched, and several of his men were wounded, one fatally. He blew his whistle, and the English returned shot for shot, with a flight of arrows. Then the Cimaroons took a hand, and under the combined Indian and English warfare the Spaniards were routed. Close by the town gate they made another stand. Drake’s men again scattered them, and with a rush entered the town. Guards were placed at the entrances at either end that the raiders might be secure while here. They stayed only an hour and a half. Drake ordered his men to take no heavy plunder, for they had a long march to make back to their ships, and they were yet in danger of attack. Still, many of them and the Cimaroons managed to make “some good pillage.”