Swift and sudden raids, swift and sudden disappearances. He was elusive as a cobra and as swift to strike. You thought you had him, the forked stick about his neck pinning him to the ground. No! The Spaniards thought that they had him at Santa Marta. No! In seventeen days he sailed into Fort Diego with a fine ship of ninety tons flying the flag of St. George.
But at Fort Diego sorrowful news awaited him. His brother, John Drake, returning from the mainland with his pinnace laden with planks, had sighted a ship. He had no arms except a rusty musket and a broken rapier. But with so much ease had their captures usually been made that they had grown over-confident. They attacked, only to find hides fixed round the bulwarks of the Spanish frigate like hammock nettings and the crew armed with pikes and muskets. John Drake and another, Richard Allen, were killed before the pinnace was able with its oars to get away.
Francis Drake, however, had little time for mourning. At the beginning of January, 1573, thirty of his men were prostrated by fever, and some of them died. Amongst them was another of his brothers, Joseph. This is the first and the last we hear of Joseph Drake, and very likely we should not have heard of him had not Francis, for the benefit of his men and in defiance of all the decencies of his age, made his surgeon perform an autopsy upon the body. The surgeon learnt nothing of value and died himself a few days later, whether from the fever or blood-poisoning there is no evidence.
The epidemic passed away as unexpectedly as it had come; and no sooner were Drake’s men restored to health than certain news was received that the Spanish fleet had arrived at Nombre de Dios to take home the gold and jewels of Peru. The five months’ wait was at an end. Already the storehouses of Panama were being unbarred, the mules assembled to carry their precious load across the isthmus. It was Drake’s new plan to waylay that train between Panama and Venta Cruz and at one swoop repay his men and himself for their long voyage.
He had his plans cut and dried. He left his ships and prisoners in the hands of Ellis Hixom. The prisoners were to be well treated and protected from the vengeance of the Cimaroons. And under no circumstances was Ellis Hixom to trust any messenger that should pretend he came from Francis Drake, unless he brought with him Francis Drake’s own handwriting. Then, with eighteen of his own men and twenty-five Cimaroons under Pedro, armed with bows and arrows, to act as carriers, he set out at sunrise on February 3rd on his overland march.
CHAPTER V
THE FIRST ATTACK ON THE MULE TRAIN. FAILURE. THE SECOND ATTACK. SUCCESS.
EACH DAY THE force marched from dawn until ten of the forenoon. Then it rested until noon was past and marched again until four. At four the Cimaroons quickly set up six houses made of a few posts and palmito boughs with thatches of plantain leaves. So many rivers intersected the isthmus that the men never suffered from want of water, and what with plantains, potatoes, oranges, pines and lemons they had all the fruit they could want to sweeten their meals.
Three days after they had started, they reached a little Cimaroon town built upon a hillside. It had from fifty to sixty houses and one broad street lying east and west. The houses were clean and the people dressed after the Spanish fashion, though in a cheaper style. A mud wall ten feet high and a broad dyke beyond protected it.
Here Drake stayed for two days and, seeing that the natives had no priests, taught them the Lord’s Prayer and instructed them in the true worship. His teaching so affected his congregation that he was promised double the number of men he had if he would only continue his evangelism for another three days. But his business was the gold train, and on the afternoon of the second day he set out again. Four Cimaroons marched ahead in complete silence, twelve of Drake’s men followed a mile behind as a vanguard, with a captain, the rest made a rearguard under a second captain. They marched under high trees in a cool and pleasant shade, men inspired. Somewhere on a ridge a great tree would rise from which a man might view in one sweeping glance the Atlantic sea across which they had come and the great unknown ocean of the Spice Islands and Cathay.
The next morning they climbed the ridge, and upon a word from Pedro halted. Pedro took Drake by the hand. In the trunk of the highest tree steps had been cut, and at the top of it an arbour had been built in which twelve men might sit. To this arbour Drake now mounted. A fair breeze kept the day clear, and as he gazed out upon the Pacific Ocean, the first Englishman to see it since the dawn of time, he besought Almighty God of His goodness to give him life and leave to sail once in an English ship upon that sea. He called up John Oxenham and the rest of his men and repeated his prayer. It is interesting that Oxenham, who died in an attempt to anticipate him, replied that “unless the Captain did beat him from his company, he would follow him by God’s grace.” It was a splendid hour in the young adventurer’s life. Was he moved by the spirit which led to the conquest of the Matterhorn and the attempts upon Mount Everest? That puts it too high. By the urge to discover the treasure of the Cocos Islands? That puts it too low. But mix the ecstasy of the Crusades with the yearning of the German Field-Marshal on the dome of St. Paul’s, and we shall probably get near to understanding his emotions.
Beyond the ridge the character of the country changed. To the cool woods succeeded an open prairie where the pampas grass overtopped the head. For three days they marched with glimpses of Panama and its high church tower, and on the 14th of February they reached a grove close to the road to Venta Cruz and there lay hidden.
Pedro dressed a Cimaroon in the clothes which negroes wore in Panama and sent him then into the city to find out upon what hour of what night the mule train would start upon its journey. The first stage from Panama to Venta Cruz, owing to the heat of the open savanna, was always made at night, the second from Venta Cruz to Nombre de Dios by day, because even if the river was not used the road ran by the river in the cool of woods.
The Cimaroon was sent off into the town an hour before night fell. It was well that he went betimes, for he came running back hours before he was expected. He had fallen in with friends. They had told him that a big government ship of three hundred and fifty tons had arrived at Nombre de Dios and that the Treasurer of Lima, meaning to travel back himself with his wife and family in so fine a ship, was starting that very night with fourteen mules, of which eight were laden with gold and one with jewels and the rest with baggage. There would be following him two mule trains of fifty mules, one laden for the most part with food and a little silver and the second one with gold and jewels.
Upon this Drake struck camp and marched back to the Panama side of Venta Cruz, where the mule train was to be intercepted. First of all he dressed the whole of his company in white shirts so that even in the dark they might not attack one another. Then he stationed half the English under John Oxenham and the Cimaroons under Pedro on one side of the road and fifty paces back from it in the long grass. They were not to move until the leading mule of the last train was level with them. The mules were in a harness one behind the other, and when the first mule was held it would lie down and those behind would do the same. Drake led the second half of his tiny army forward until he judged that he would be level with the leading mule of the advance train, just when the leader of the last would be abreast of his rearguard.
After these dispositions were taken, not a sound was to be made. Both parties lay silent for an hour. Then from a long way off in the still night they heard the tinkling of bells, but not of the bells they were waiting for. The caravan taking provisions and merchandise from the fleet at Nombre de Dios would cross the caravan from Panama at some point of the track. If it passed first, Drake’s men were to let it pass unmolested, and the bells of this caravan were what they were now hearing. They lay in the long grass quiet as cats on the watch; and in a little while, as the bells from Venta Cruz grew louder, they heard them faintly answered from the direction of Panama.
Suddenly something went amiss. Drake, lying with his men fifty paces back from the road, heard the clatter which a horse makes shying across a road, and then the sound of a h
orse galloping, and a few minutes later the bells of the train from Panama ceased to ring. The caravan from Venta Cruz went by and the music of its bells dwindled away. Then, when Drake had almost given up hope, the caravan from Panama was heard again, grew louder, came abreast, was seized. But never had Drake suffered so cruel a deception. What he had seized was merely the van of the procession — mules carrying the provisions and accoutrement which the Treasurer would need upon his voyage home to Spain. There were just two mules loaded with silver ingots. The Treasurer with half a year’s produce of the mines of Peru had turned back to Panama.
For the second time on this expedition Drake had failed. For the fourth time he had been disappointed of his prize — Rio de la Hacha, St. John de Ulua, Nombre de Dios, and now the mule train. Nichols’ narrative remarks that since God had willed that this rich booty should not be taken, it had probably been honestly in the Treasurer’s charge. But there could have been little consolation in any such reflection for Francis Drake, and less still when he discovered that the failure was due to one man in his own section who was drunk. Robert Pike had crept forward from the ambush, unseen by any but one Cimaroon who followed him. Robert Pike wanted to show what a fine fellow he was by seizing the first mule. But the first mule was a horse ridden by a gentleman of Venta Cruz with his page running at his stirrup. As Robert Pike rose up in his white shirt the Cimaroon leapt upon him and pulled him down, but not in time. The startled gentleman galloping forward to the Treasurer had told him of a white figure rising suddenly at the roadside, and conjectured that Captain Drake was minded to repair the missed occasion of Nombre de Dios.
Drake had the staunchness of the oak beams of his ship for he set about securing at once the safety of his men. The chief muleteer advised him to shift for himself at once, for he would have the whole forces of the city and the country upon him before the day had dawned. But to lead his men back by the long secret path by which they had come, with their fatigue doubled and redoubled by the bitterness of their disappointment, he hardly dared. The only other way was the high road to Venta Cruz where his enemies would be waiting. He turned to Pedro and asked:
“Pedro, will you give your hand not to forsake me?”
Pedro gave the Captain his hand and vowed: “I would rather die at your feet than leave you to your enemies.”
Drake thereupon made all his company rest and eat and then ride the mules towards Venta Cruz. A mile from the town he let the mules go. From this point the road was cut through the forest to a breadth of twelve feet, and a company of soldiers had come out from the town to defend it with a body of friars from the monastery, led by one of them of a military mind. As Drake advanced, the Spanish captain cried:
“Que gente?”
Drake replied: “Englishmen.”
Upon which the Spanish commander: “In the name of the King of Spain, my Master, yield yourselves. I promise in the word and faith of a gentleman that if you do so, I will use you with all courtesy.”
Drake drew a little nearer and answered: “For the honour of the Queen of England, my Mistress, I must have passage this way,” and he discharged his pistol.
The Spaniards then fired their volley. A bullet grazed Drake, lightly wounded some of the men and killed one only, John Harris. Drake blew his whistle and his party advanced, shooting and flighting their arrows. The Spaniards retired towards a spot which they had roughly fortified, but the Cimaroons, running forward with leaps and bounds as if they were performing a country dance, forced them to fly, friars and all. Drake, following upon their heels, entered the town of Venta Cruz.
A pretty story shows that even in this hour of distress Drake had forgotten neither his kindliness nor his manners. Venta Cruz amongst its fifty houses owned what we should now know as a maternity home. Children born in the fever-stricken district of Nombre de Dios had a short life as a rule, and it was the habit of those expectant mothers who could afford it to travel to Venta Cruz for their lying-in. There were three such ladies there on this night, and blazing torches and the cries of the Cimaroons in the street below their windows frightened them almost out of their lives. Drake, hearing of their fears, sent a message to reassure them. But they were not reassured. Nothing would content them but he must come in person, and setting aside the hundred and one new arrangements which he had to make, in person he went. He told the ladies that he had set a guard on each bridge at the ends of the town and that they might sleep free from any fear of molestation by the men under his command.
He left the town at the approach of dawn and hastened by the long road to the Rio Diego where his pinnaces were waiting for him. His men were hungry, their shoes worn out, their feet bleeding; so Drake himself moaned louder than any of them that his feet were cut to ribbons, and the rest on that account found their troubles more easy to endure. When three leagues from the rendezvous, Drake sent forward a Cimaroon with a gold toothpick of his, upon which he had scratched with a knife the words, “By me, Francis Drake.” But Ellis Hixom, mindful of the strict charge that he was to pay no attention to any messenger unless he bore Francis Drake’s own handwriting, refused to listen to him. Then the Cimaroon pointed out the scratched message, and as Drake on the afternoon of February 22nd led his men down the bank of the river, he saw his pinnaces and his sailors waiting.
Few words were wanted to make it clear that the attack had been a failure, and fewer still that it would be repeated in greater strength. They all returned to their harbour and their ships, confident that the next time would atone for all.
But Drake must again mark time; again vanish; again find work to keep his company on the plane of high endeavour. Not for so long, however, this time. The gold fleet must sail from Nombre de Dios and the mule train cross the isthmus before the rains began. He arranged that half his company should go eastward in one pinnace named the Bear, under John Oxenham, and collect what store of victuals it could, whilst he himself, with the other half, would lie in wait to the west for ships carrying gold from Nicaragua and Veragua to the fleet at Nombre de Dios.
Of the two parties, the Bear used her time the more profitably, for whereas Drake returned empty-handed, Oxenham took a frigate, set the crew of ten ashore and brought the ship along with a great store of maize in her hold, twenty-eight fat hogs and two hundred hens. Of more value even than the cargo was the ship herself. She was new, strong, and built with fine lines by Menendez at Havana for his Indian Guard. Drake was in need of a sound ship for his homeward voyage, and here she was. He careened her, cleaned her, tallowed her: he mounted his guns in her and provisioned her, and then he set sail with her and the Bear pinnace towards the Cativaas islands, close to Nombre de Dios. But, on the way, another unwished-for partner forced himself upon the expedition — a Captain Têtu of Havre in command of a Huguenot privateer. He bore up under Drake’s lee with a prayer for water. Drake sent him some water immediately and bade him follow to his anchorage. There Captain Têtu sent Drake as a present a fine gilt scimitar which had belonged to Henry II, King of France, and had been given to Captain Têtu by Admiral Strozzi. Drake gave him in return a chain of gold and a medallion, and then, for the first time, learned of the Massacre of the Huguenots on St. Bartholomew’s Day of the preceding year.
But the chance meeting was not to end with courtesies and presents. Captain Têtu declared that he had heard so much of Drake that he wished to share Captain Drake’s particular enterprise. Drake and his men discovered under this sailor’s fine words some signs of jealousy and went into conference. But they found no way out but consent. The French Captain had a ship of eighty tons and a crew of seventy men. Drake could not afford a quarrel with him. He agreed that Têtu should join and receive half of the treasure taken. They then proceeded in company to an anchorage which Drake had chosen as the most convenient at a spot called the Cabeças, or the Headlands. There five days were employed in provisioning the French ship and making the final preparations. The actual force engaged was to consist of twenty Frenchmen, fifteen English and a pa
rty of Cimaroons. They were to embark in the new Menendez frigate, the Bear pinnace, and a long-boat from the French ship, and make their way to a small river, the Rio Francisco, twenty miles from Nombre de Dios. There was to be this time no long march across the isthmus. The River Chagres was falling, and Drake’s Cimaroon spies brought him word that the mule trains were now marching nightly all the way from Panama to Nombre de Dios.
At the mouth of the Rio Francisco it was found that the water was too shallow for the Menendez frigate. The men required were therefore transferred to the pinnace and the long-boat, and the frigate was sent back to the Cabeças. The two boats were rowed up the river, and when the force was landed they too were ordered back to the anchorage, with instructions to return without fail on the fourth day. The men then marched forward through the woods in the same order and the same strict silence which they had observed before. They camped for a night within a mile of the road and close to Nombre de Dios, so close indeed that they could hear the carpenters in the harbour working at their ships to escape the heat of the day. There was another sound, however, for which they were listening, and early in the morning they heard it — such a jangling and chiming of bells as set all their hearts dancing. The whole company moved silently to the side of the road — there was to be no drunkard spoiling all this time — and three caravans, one of fifty mules and two of seventy, came unsuspectingly forward, carrying, apart from gold, a weight of silver near to thirty tons.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 863